secret men’s business
In Australian indigenous culture secret men’s business
refers to ceremony and ritual open only to men. The term has been transferred
into standard Australian English where it is used, often jokingly, to
refer to stereotypically male activities, talk and interests: ‘Kingswood
driving is secret men’s business — just as pushing a shopping
trolley straight is secret women’s business’.
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shag: like a shag on a rock
Isolated, lonely, exposed. A shag is a cormorant, commonly found in
coastal and inland waters of Australia, where they are often seen perched
alone on a rock. Any isolated person can be described as, or feel like,
a shag on a rock—for example, a political leader with few supporters,
or a person without friends at a party.
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sheep: on the sheep’s back
A reference to the wool industry as the source of Australia’s
prosperity, first recorded in 1894. For much of its history Australia
depended on wool as its main export, and so the notion arose that Australia
was ‘riding on the sheep’s back’. Although wool is
now less important as an export, the phrase still evokes a sense of
the importance of the agricultural industry to the country’s wealth.
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sheila
A girl or girlfriend, a woman. This word first appeared in Australian
English in 1832 with the spelling shelah. Both sheila
and shelah are anglicised spellings of the Irish Gaelic
Sile, and it was probably the large number of Irish
migrants to Australia that led to this common Irish name becoming a
general term for a ‘woman’. For a different, but nevertheless
Irish, view of the origin of the term see Ozwords:
Who is Sheila?
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shower: I didn’t come down in the last shower
I’m not stupid, don’t try and put one over me! This is
a response to someone who is taking you for a fool. The phrase indicates
that you have more experience or shrewdness than you have been given
credit for—’A thousand bucks to paint the laundry? I didn’t
come down in the last shower!’ It was first recorded in the early
1900s.
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sickie
Abbreviation of ‘a day’s sick leave’, usually with
the implication that there is insufficient medical reason for the day
off work. Sickie illustrates a distinctive feature
of Australian English — the addition of -ie or -y to abbreviated
words or phrases. Other examples include: bushy ‘bush
person’, firie ‘firefighter’, surfie
‘surfer’, and Tassie ‘Tasmania’.
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skimpy
A barmaid in a hotel who wears very little (i.e. ‘skimpy’)
clothing. Skimpys are found in Western Australian hotels,
particularly in Kalgoorlie. These hotel employees are also said to do
skimpy work: ‘The laws regulating stripping and
skimpy work limit the amount of body a person can show in a public place.’
(North West Telegraph,1989). The term was first recorded in
1988.
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skip
An Australian of British descent. Also skippy. First
recorded 1982. The term is the creation of non-British Australian migrants,
especially children, who needed a term to counter the insulting terms
directed at them by Australians of British descent. It derives from
the television series ‘Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo’.
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sleepout
A verandah, porch, or outbuilding that is used for sleeping accommodation.
The word first appears in the 1920s, and was often used when hot weather
encouraged people to sleep in a sheltered area that might receive cooling
night breezes. The porch or verandah is sometimes built in with windows
or walls so that it eventually becomes a permanent extra bedroom.
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snag
A sausage. In Australia and elsewhere snag has a number
of meanings, including ‘a submerged tree stump’, ‘an
unexpected drawback’, and more recently a ‘ sensitive
new age guy’.
But in Australia a snag is also a ‘sausage’.
This sense probably comes from British dialect snag
‘a morsel, a light meal’. First recorded 1941.
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sorry
Sorry Day, first held on the 26th of May 1998, is
a public expression of regret for the treatment of the stolen generations,
those Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their parents
by white authorities. In Aboriginal English, however, sorry
is associated with grief and mourning. Sorry business
is a ceremony associated with death. Thus Sorry Day
is also, for the indigenous community, a day of mourning.
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spit the dummy
To indulge in a sudden display of anger or frustration; to lose one’s
temper. The phrase is usually used of an adult, and the implication
is that the outburst is childish, like a baby spitting out its dummy
in a tantrum and refusing to be pacified.
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spunk
A sexually attractive person. Australians also use the meanings for
this term that exist in international English: 1 courage
and determination. 2 semen. But in Australia spunk
is most commonly used to refer to a person of either sex who is regarded
as sexually attractive— he’s a real spunk!
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squatter
A squatter is a person who unlawfully occupies an
uninhabited building. But in early nineteenth-century Australia a squatter
(first recorded 1828) was also a person who occupied Crown land without
legal title, and then any person who grazed livestock on a large scale.
Squatters became wealthy and powerful, and the term squattocracy
(recorded 1843) alludes to their aristocratic pretensions.
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stacks on the mill
In sporting contexts, a pile-up of players, usually on top of the ball.
It was originally a schoolyard game, a call to children to pile in a
heap on top of someone. The full cry in the Australian children’s
game was ‘stacks on the mill, more on still!’ The phrase
is now sometimes abbreviated to stacks on. ‘Stacks’
is a corruption of ‘sacks’, from an older British game ‘more
sacks to the mill’.
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stolen generations
Aboriginal children who were taken from their families and placed in
institutions or fostered with white families from 1883 to 1969. ‘I
hope this film will be a turning point in Australians’ awareness
of the complex and painful issues surrounding the Stolen generations.’
(Koori Mail 20 February 2002). The term was first recorded
in 1982.
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straight to the poolroom
Highly prized, regarded as something so special that it cannot be used,
but must go on display. ‘Darl, this Chinese vase you’ve
painted is beautiful—it’s going straight to the poolroom’.
The expression was a favourite one of Darryl Kerrigan (Michael Caton)
in the 1997 Australian movie The Castle.
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stubby
A short, squat beer bottle with a capacity of 375 ml. The bottle is
stubby (short and thick) in comparison with the tall and slender 750
ml beer bottle. The stereotypical Australian male is often depicted
drinking a stubby, while dressed in a pair of stubbies—the
tradename for a pair of men’s brief shorts.
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stubby: a stubby short of a sixpack
Not very bright or clever, not quite ‘with it’. This is
an Australian variation of a common international idiom, typically represented
by ‘a sandwich short of a picnic’. It combines the Australian
‘stubby’ (a small squat 375 ml bottle of beer) with the
borrowed American ‘sixpack’ (a pack of six cans of beer),
demonstrating how readily Australian English naturalises Americanisms.
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such is life
The last words spoken by the bushranger Ned Kelly before he was hanged
at Melbourne Gaol in 1880. The phrase is used to express a philosophical
acceptance of the bad things that happen in life. It was further popularised
by its use as the title for Joseph Furphy’s famous novel about
rural Australia (1903). Some claim that Kelly’s last words were
in fact ‘Ah well, I suppose it has come to this’—
not quite as memorable.
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swag
In British thieves' slang swag was 'a thief's plunder
or booty; a quantity of goods unlawfully acquired'. The term appears
in Grose's 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, where one
of the definitions is 'any quantity of goods'. James Hardy Vaux, who
was a convict in Australia, includes the term in the slang dictionary
compiled in 1812 and published in his Memoirs in 1819: 'The
Swag is a term used in speaking of any booty you have lately obtained'.
In Australia the term swag was transferred from the
quantity of goods acquired by a thief to the possessions carried by
a traveller in the bush..
The term is defined in The Australian National Dictionary
thus: 'The collection of possessions and daily necessaries carried by
one travelling, usually on foot, in the bush; especially the blanket-wrapped
roll carried, usually on the back or across the shoulders, by an itinerant
worker'.
The earliest citation for this meaning occurs in the Sydney Herald
10 November 1841: 'They gave me back my horse, and on him we fastened
'our swags' (for be it known, they scorned to take our dirty linen).
Other citations in the Australian National Dictionary include:
1859 'Eye Witness' Voyage to Australia: The digger's
mode of travelling is very distressing, as they generally carry with
them all their utensils and tent covering; the weight of these things
approaching near one hundred weight [sic]. The term or name given
to this load is 'swag', which is made up in the following manner;
his blankets are spread out, the shirts and small clothing are laid
on them and rolled like a thick rope until it resembles a horse's
neck-collar with both ends tied; this is thrown across the shoulders
as a sportsman carries his shot-belt; to this is tied a pannikin,
an axe to cut wood, a billy to boil and carry water in one hand, and
a green bough in the other to ward off the flies from his eyes.
1890 Bulletin: Did you ever take 'the wallaby' along
some dreary track
With that hideous malformation, called a swag, upon your back.
1962 V.C. Hall, Dreamtime Justice: 'Where are your
teeth, Mr Morck?' There was a placatory note in the old mail-rider's
voice as he told her his teeth were in his swag.
The verb swag meaning 'to carry one's swag' appears
in the 1850s, and the compound swagman ('a person who
carries a swag; an itinerant worker, especially one in search of employment,
who carries a swag; a tramp') appears in the 1860s.
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swagman
A person who carries a swag ; an itinerant worker.
A swagman usually travelled on foot, carrying a swag
on his back. The swag was made up of the necessities
of daily life, wrapped in a blanket, often with a billy and pannikin
tied to it. The swagman travelled vast distances in
search of work. First recorded 1869.
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Tallarook: things are crook in Tallarook
This is a catchphrase for any bad situation, formed from a rhyme on
the place name. Its use often prompts a similar response from a listener,
such as ‘but things are dead at Birkenhead’. Other similar
Australian rhyming phrases include ‘there’s nothin’
doin’ at Araluen’, ‘got the arse at Bulli Pass’,
‘in jail at Innisfail, ‘things are weak at Julia Creek’,
and ‘there’s no lucre at Echuca’.
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tall poppy
A person who stands out from the crowd by being successful, rich, or
famous. It is often said that Australians have a tendency to cut tall
poppies down to size by denigrating them. This is known as
the tall poppy syndrome. First recorded 1902.
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tart
Call a woman a tart and she'll take offence, and rightly
so. There are two current meanings for a female tart, both derogatory:
- a prostitute, or a promiscuous woman
- an offensive slang term for a girl or woman.
But it wasn't always the case. For the best part of the last hundred
years, calling a woman a tart was not necessarily an
insult. In fact, the use of tart implying admiration
or affection for a woman was first recorded in Standard English in 1864,
in Hotten's Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words:
Tart, a term of approval applied by the London lower orders to a
young woman for whom some affection is felt. The expression is not
generally employed by the young men unless the female is in 'her best',
with a coloured gown, red or blue shawl, and plenty of ribbons in
her bonnet - in fact, made pretty all over, like the jam tarts in
the swell bakers' shops.
In Australia too this sense of tart occurs:
From The Bulletin, 1905: We 'ad a tart staying at our place
once what 'ad the beautifulest 'ead uf 'air yer ever sighted.
From Arthur Upfield, 1937: I'm in love with a tart. Her name's Lucy
Jelly. She is the loveliest girl within a thousand miles of Burracoppin.
From Frederick Mills, 1924: I was on with a taxi-driver named Phyllis.
Now, she was the neatest tart outside of a baker's shop... She 'ad
the bonzerest ankles I ever seen.
Unique to Australian English is the use of tart to
mean a girlfriend or sweetheart. The Australian National Dictionary
records this meaning from 1892:
From the Sydney Truth, 1892: They were very fond of music,
were this baldy and his 'tart'.
From The Bulletin, 1894: It may be merely the affectionate
anxiety of a 'bloke' for his 'tart'.
Tart as a woman of easy virtue is first recorded in
1887. Although George Orwell comments in 1931 that `this word now seems
absolutely interchangeable with "girl", with no implication
of "prostitute". People will speak of their daughter or sister
as a tart', by this time the bad tart had largely overtaken
the good tart. Interestingly, the two meanings had
coexisted for the best part of a century. The good tart was last seen
in the OED in 1980, while the tart as girlfriend makes
her final appearance in the AND in 1977.
Where did tart come from? There is some dispute over
this. The OED (1989) tells us that it is a figurative use of
the culinary tart, as the quotations from Hotten and Mills suggest.
The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993) says it is
probably an abbreviation of sweetheart; but The
Australian National Dictionary thinks it is likely to be an abbreviation
of jam tart, itself probably at one time rhyming slang
for sweetheart.
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tickets: have tickets on yourself
Be conceited, have a high opinion of yourself—‘He’s
got tickets on himself if he thinks I’ll go out with him’.
The original meaning of ‘ticket’ is uncertain, but it may
refer to betting tickets (a person is so conceited that he backs himself),
to raffle tickets, to a high price tag (especially one on the outfit
of a mannequin in a shop window), or to prize ribbons awarded at an
agricultural show.
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trackie daks
Tracksuit pants. Daks began as a trade name for a
brand of trousers, but it has become a general term for trousers or
pants—you put on your daks and you also put on
your underdaks. In Australia tracksuit pants
became track pants and then trackie daks.
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troppo: go troppo
Behave strangely, lose your mind. The phrase was first used by Australian
troops in the Pacific during the Second World War, and arose from the
idea that long exposure to tropical conditions affected your sanity.
It is now used in various contexts —‘Why’s Ray selling
his house and buying shares in a wind farm?’ ‘Dunno. Probably
gone troppo.’ The abbreviation of ‘tropical’ and the
addition of -o demonstrate a common Australian way of altering words.
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turps: on the turps
Drinking heavily. ‘Turps’ is an abbreviation of ‘turpentine’
and the phrase alludes to the use of spirits such as turps and methylated
spirits (‘metho’) by down-and-out alcoholics. In the earliest
uses of the phrase the alcohol referred to is a spirit such as gin or
rum, but more recently it has referred to any kind of alcoholic drink,
especially beer.
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two-up
A gambling game. Two coins are tossed in the air and bets placed on
a showing of two heads or two tails. The two coins are placed tails
up on a flat board called the kip. The ring-keeper
(the person in charge of the two-up ring) calls come
in spinner, and the spinner tosses the
coins. First recorded 1854.
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true blue
The Australian National Dictionary Centre recently received a phone
call asking if we had the phrase true blue in The
Australian National Dictionary, and if not, why not - because,
said the caller, it's a genuine Australian expression. John Williamson's
song 'True Blue' proves that it is a dinkie-di Aussie expression, claimed
the caller. Is true blue an Australian term? The term
itself is certainly not Australian, and its history goes back to the
medieval period. At a time when all colours were given symbolic significance,
blue was the symbol of loyalty, constancy, faithfulness,
and truth - perhaps with regard to the blue of the sky, or to some specially
fast dye. This symbolic meaning is common in Chaucer's poetry, and occurs
in the late fourteenth century poem (often attributed to Chaucer) Balade
against Women Unconstant: 'To newe thinges your lust is euer kene.
In stede of blew, thus may ye were al grene' ('Towards new things your
pleasure is always eager. Instead of blue [the colour of constancy]
you must therefore wear all green [the colour of lack of constancy]').
Very soon thereafter the phrase true blue arose. It
meant: 'faithful, staunch and unwavering in one's faith, principles,
etc.; genuine, real' (OED). Thus, in 1663, Butler writes in
Hudibras: 'For his Religion it was fit To match his Learning
and his Wit; 'Twas Presbyterian true Blew'. The phrase was subsequently
taken up by various political parties in England before it became the
distinctive term for the Conservative party and meant 'staunchly Tory'.
Hence Trollope in Framley Parsonage (1860): 'There was no portion
of the county more decidedly true blue'. And this is one of the two
senses it still has in England - 'true blue adjective
extremely loyal or orthodox; Conservative; noun such a person, especially
a Conservative' (The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, 1995).
Something entirely different happened in Australia: 'sterling' became
'currency'. [For the Aussie associations of 'currency' and 'sterling'
see, for example: R. Mudie The Picture of Australia (1829):
'Those who are born in the colony are called Currency, and
those of English or European birth... are called Sterling.';
Bulletin (August 1895): 'The Australian flag should be more
than a defaced British ensign.... "Currency" need pay no deference
to "sterling".'] Thus in The Worker (Sydney, 1897)
we find:
Reports from the sheds are cheering, both [Union] reps and men being
of the sort called 'true blue'. Of course we find a few of those queer
individuals of the brainless, thick-hided, scab-barracker type amongst
us.
The 'true blues' are the striking workers. Scabs (and, presumably,
the wealthy and conservative grazing class) are their antithesis. The
contrast drawn between 'true blues' and 'scabs' is clearly not a one-off:
The Worker (1896): 'Jim Smith is "true blue" and
Bill Muggins is not a scab though Jack Ruggles has called him so'.
The working class associations of the term persist. In 1921 a letter
to the Editor of Ross's Monthly (Melbourne) says: 'Ever since
I arrived at an age capable of thinking I have been an ardent Laborite'.
The letter is signed 'True Blue'; Bulletin (April 1975): 'J.B.
on the other hand, is a true-blue Labor man'; A.B. Facey A Fortunate
Life (1981): 'The unionists were real true blues - loyal and sticking
together'. The Australian emphasis is still on loyalty etc., but whereas
in England the political associations are with the Conservatives, in
Australia they are firmly with the Left.
These working class associations of 'true blue' remain, but in a further
development of meaning the term came to be applied to any loyal Australian;
all 'true Aussies' or all that is 'truly Aussie' are 'true blue': Bulletin
(January 1974): 'In the meantime, keep up your true-blue Aussie image';
P. Barton, Bastards I have known (1981): 'that bit of paper
says he's not a dinky-di true-blue Aussie'; The Kalgoorlie Miner
(1989): 'Eleven Boulder residents became true blue Aussies on Australia
Day'. In other words, true blue has widened into a
synonym for dinkum or dinky-di, or
for its variants fair dinkum and (earlier) straight
dinkum.
Other citations collected at the Centre indicate that further developments
have taken place. The Kalgoorlie Miner (1989) reports: 'Beer
belly and pie-eating contests, coupled with the background of the aquatic
centre and hot conditions should make the evening a true-blue event
to remember'. Here, true-blue is a synonym for the
adjective Australian or Aussie. Again,
in 1989, the Observer (Narrogin) reports: '[She] became a "true
blue" during a naturalisation ceremony'. Here, true blue
is a noun meaning an Australian.
The term true blue therefore is well within the tradition
of turning pommie `sterling' into dinky-di Aussie `currency': its distinctive
Australian connotations have separated it from the English sense of
the word. On these grounds, it will certainly get a guernsey in the
next edition of The Australian National Dictionary.
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ute
Abbreviation of utility truck, a vehicle with a two-door
cab that looks like a sedan, and a tray area (with permanent sides)
that is part of the body. Many towns have an annual gathering of utes
for competitive display, called a ute muster, with
prizes awarded in categories such as ‘best street ute’ and
‘best feral ute’.
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verandah over the toy shop
A man’s beer belly. ‘Toy shop’ is a joking term for
the male genitals. In standard English verandah is
‘an open-sided roofed structure along the outside of a house’.
In Australia it also has the sense ‘a roof over the pavement in
front of a shop, supported by poles’, but this sense is in decline
since Australian shops now rarely have such verandahs. The more common
version of this phrase is now awning over the toy shop.
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widgie
In the 1950s in Australia a widgie was the female
counterpart of a bodgie.
The word (often spelt weegie in early occurrences)
is of unknown origin.
In the Sydney Morning Herald 11 February 1955 there occurs
an interesting description of the 1950s widgie:
Constable Waldon said: 'A widgie, as she is known to me, is generally
dressed in a very tight blouse, mostly without sleeves, and generally
with a deep, plunging front. The blouse closely conforms to the lines
of the body. In addition, she usually has a form-fitting skirt, which
is very tight, especially around the knees. The skirt flares out a
little below the knees and generally has a split either at the side
or at the rear to enable her to walk. A widgie wears a short-cropped
haircut.' Judge Curlewis said the detective's description of a widgie
was the best he had heard in a Court.
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wigwam: a wigwam for a goose’s bridle
A snubbing reply to an unwanted question. It might be used to answer
an inquisitive child who asks ‘What’s in the bag?’
The original English idiom was ‘a whim-wham for a goose’s
bridle’. ‘Whim-wham’ meaning ‘an ornament’
disappeared from the language in the nineteenth century and survived
only in this phrase. In Australia the meaningless ‘whim-wham’
was altered to the more familiar ‘wigwam’, and sometimes
to ‘wing-wong’.
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wobbly: chuck a wobbly
Lose your temper, have a tantrum, as when one federal parliamentarian
admonished another in the Senate, ‘Stop chucking a wobbly, Senator.
Behave yourself.’ It is a variation on the earlier phrase ‘throw
a fit’. ‘Chuck’, in the sense of ‘throw’
or ‘stage’, is used in other Australian expressions with
the same meaning, such as ‘chuck a mental’ and ‘chuck
a mickey’.
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wog
A minor illness such as a cold, a ‘bug’. This is not the
offensive word wog used in Australia to mean a migrant
from southern Europe, and in Britain to mean a non-white migrant. This
Australian wog originally meant ‘a nasty insect
or bug’, and then came to mean a minor illness. First recorded
in this sense 1941.
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wowser
The term wowser - surely one of the most impressive
and expressive of Australian coinages - is used to express healthy contempt
for those who attempt to force their own morality on everyone. The person
who abstains from alcohol (for whatever reason) is not thereby a wowser:
s/he's just probably very fit. But when s/he tries to force everyone
else to do as s/he does, then s/he is a wowser. Or as C.J. Dennis defines
the term: 'Wowser: an ineffably pious person who mistakes this world
for a penitentiary and himself for a warder'.
The term originally meant `A person who is obnoxious or annoying to
the community or who is in some way disruptive' and was applied, for
example, to prostitutes and public drunks. Feminists and equal opportunists
got the `wowser' guernsey too: Truth (Sydney) (1902): 'Another
of his whims or freaks was to promise a number of wowsers of the `wild
woman' type (to use a term coined by Mrs Lynn Linton) that he would
supplant men in the Public Service with women'. These `wild women' wowsers
were seen as on a par with `the warrigal wowsers of Waine' whom Truth
(1904) castigates as `lewd larrikin louts'.
The shift to the present sense of wowser (to wit,
a mealy-mouthed hypocrite, a pious prude, one who condemns or seeks
to curtail the pleasures of others or who works to have his or her own
rigid morality enforced on all) occurs at the turn of the century. The
earliest citation for this sense in The Australian National Dictionary
is 1900. In 1903 Truth bugles again: 'He ridicules the mournful
croakings of the wasted wowsers who denounce every earthly pleasure
as sinful'. Truth, in fact, is rich in anti-wowser invective:
(1904) 'The watery wowsers who wouldn't be seen sipping a nobbler in
a public house, but who swig good stiff inches from the big black bottle
on the bedroom shelf'; (1904) WHITE-EYED WOWSERS simulating sanctity...
whose whole life is one pious yelp against the ordinary joys of common
humanity'; (1906) 'Those pious, Puritanical, pragmatical, pulpit-pounding
self-pursuers whom we call wowsers'; (1911) 'Moliere's Tartuffe was
a Roman Catholic French wowser'; (1912) '...the denunciation of Sunday
golf and every kind of rational Sunday recreation - except that of putting
'tray-bits' in the Sabbath plate - which it is the wowser's recreation
to count up in the vestry afterwards'; (1914) 'Governor Strickland was
asked recently for his definition of the new word "wowser".
The Governor said it was generally defined as a man who objected to
three inches of an open-worked stocking, but sweated his employees';
(1915) 'The wowsers enjoy the whine of life'; (1916) 'Because of the
howls of the wowsers, the venereal diseases are just those that are
most carefully concealed....'; (1916) 'The Wowser is invariably a member
of the exploiting class or one of his professional, clerical, or other
hangers-on'.
In fact, by 1911, the word would seem to have been firmly established:
RTH (1911): 'And what writer now would consider it necessary
to use the inverted commas for such robust and satisfactory slang as
wowsers...?'
From elsewhere: Aussie: the cheerful monthly (Sydney, 1922):
'Wowsers and gloom-merchants are always saying that we spend too much
of our time in sport'; Surf: All about It (1930): Yet even
today, the act of jumping into the Pacific with as little as possible
on the body is regarded with gloomy suspicion by the wowsers
; Bulletin (Sydney, 1975): 'But members of this odd body of
wowsers want the right to force their opinions on to others'.
The noun wowser gave rise to the adjective wowser
and to coinages such as wowseress, wowserette,
wowserine (all three mercifully defunct), wowserdom,
wowserish, wowserism (all three probably
still alive and kicking): Truth (1916) 'Unless people get their
backs up and fight this religious monster... this will be the most wowser-ridden
land on this old planet of ours'; L. Mann The Go-Getter (1942):
'A few years ago the age [of consent] was seventeen, but some old women
got a wowser government to increase the age'; Alan John Marshall &
R. Drysdale Journey among men (1962): 'Now we are at the gateway
of the wowser belt. A wowser is a gentleman who uses a contraceptive
as a book-mark for his Bible. Adelaide... and Melbourne are traditionally
the wowser cities.... both have a reputation for the repression of any
books that may... excite the disapproval of the small, but vociferous
wowser groups that flourish there'; Sydney Morning Herald (1976):
Mr [Fred] Nile does not see the Festival of Light as a puritanical neo-wowser
movement; Age (Melbourne, 1983): 'Coming hard on the heels
of the casino inquiry, which also recommended in the negative, the Government's
decision on poker machines may give it a puritanical or wowserish image';
Truth (1912): 'That spirit of meddlesomeness and prying prudery
that Australians call Wowserism'; Canberra Times (1984): 'The
liquor poll is a curious survivor from the turn-of-the-century days
when the country was in the grip of wowserism'. I wonder what the wowserism-quotient
is in 1997.
Best of all, the noun wowser gave birth to the rich
and wonderful verb to wowse: Truth (1909)
'... on tea the croud carouses, and the whiskered wowser wowses, And
old women garbed in trousers interject their deep "Ah-mens"';
Bulletin (1968) 'But, to be precise about wowsers and wowsing...
a wowser was not necessarily a teetotaller, it was not meant to describe
the man who led a good and pure life, but the kill-joy, the professional
moaner about everything that made life pleasant'; National Times
(Sydney, 1983) 'You bunch of wowsing do-gooders....'
The origin of our wonderful Aussie wowser is uncertain.
John Norton, the editor of Truth, claimed to have invented
the word. He used it in a headline in 1899, and later said: I invented
the word myself. I was the first man publicly to use the word. I first
gave it public utterance in the [Sydney] City Council, when I applied
it to Alderman Waterhouse, whom I referred to as... the white, woolly,
weary, watery, word-wasting wowser from Waverley. 'When I [first] used
[the word],' said Norton in the Supreme Court of Victoria, 'I did not
know what it meant. I had to find a definition afterwards' (Truth
1914). 'Asked [in the Supreme Court] to define the word "wowser,"
Mr. Norton said it had been defined by Cardinal Moran [of Sydney], thus
showing that the word was already a guest in the halls of the Princes
of the Church, [although] we others know, by common knowledge, that
the word "wowser" is in common use in less exalted and less
holy places'. ' A wowser,' continues this article in Truth, 'is - A
pernickety kind of person, always objecting to everybody else who does
not agree with him; he will interfere with the pleasures and enjoyments
of others; thinks that he alone has the right conception of right conduct,
and a monopoly of the narrow way to paradise....' [ibid.]
Truth comments on Norton's definition: 'That is Mr. Norton's
definition of a "wowser" in the "cold, chaste, white
light" of intellectual effort. When, however, the blood is tingling...
the light is of a different color.... The creation of a word like "wowser"
requires a flash of genius, and in that Promethean flash a large amount
of unconscious cerebration is in activity.... The spirit of Mr. Norton's
definition of "wowser" leads the writer to the conclusion
that the nidus of the word "wowser" may be found in the vicinity
of the word "puppy" as applied to human beings. In that sense,
the definition of the word "puppy" is given as meaning "conceit
and self-sufficiency," which, in a concrete sense, goes some part
of the way to translating the objective of the word "wowser".
A "dog baying at the moon," as an illustration, is too virile
to be used as a suitable allegorical cartoon of a wowser baying at the
good things of life, that he is too pernickety to enjoy himself, and
too mean in spirit to let others enjoy without cavilling at them. But
when we debase the "bark" of the "honest watchdog"
into the "...wow, wow" of the "self-sufficient"
puppy, we are treading close on the track of Mr. Norton's mental flash,
that has so happily added to the descriptive treasures... of our mother
tongue' [ibid.].
It is curiously tempting to accept the Norton provenance of wowser:
it would be wonderful if it were true. Less credible provenances abound.
One theory has it that the word 'wowser' comes from the initials of
a slogan (a self-justifying wowser one?): We Only
Want Social Evils
Righted. Another theory is mentioned in passing by
Bill Hornadge: 'Yet another version has it that it came into being in
the 1870s in Clunes (Victoria) where hot-gospellers became known as
"Rousers". This version has it that a member of the Town Council
who had difficulty pronouncing his rs had referred at a public meeting
to "Wowsers" - and the name stuck.' These two theories sound
a bit All-my-eye-and-Betty-Martinish to me. However, there is a British
dialectal word to wow meaning `to mew as a cat, howl
or bark as a dog, wail, to whine, grumble, complain', and it is possible
that this is the true origin of the word. Whatever its origin, wowser
is one of our most successful Ozwords. It has even been exported successfully
to the UK and the US and has been happily naturalised there for decades.
Back to Index of Australian Words
yakka
Work, strenuous labour. Also used as a verb meaning ‘to work’.
The word is used especially in the phrase hard yakka.
It comes from yaga meaning ‘work’ in the
Yagara indigenous language of the Brisbane region. Yakka
found its way into nineteenth-century Australian pidgin, and then passed
into Australian English. First recorded 1847.
Back to Index of Australian Words
yowie
A huge, shaggy, ape-like creature, that is supposed to inhabit the
bush in parts of eastern Australia. It is a mythical creature, although
many believe that they do exist. It is Australia’s equivalent
of the Himalayan yeti or the American bigfoot. The word comes from the
Aboriginal Yuwaalaraay language of northern New South Wales, where it
means ‘dream spirit’.
Back to Index of Australian Words
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