AUSSIE WORDS: BODGIE
FREDERICK LUDOWYK
BODGIE: noun, 1. something (or occasionally someone) fake, false, worthless. Frequently as adjective. 2. an Australian male youth, especially of the 1950s, distinguished by his conformity to certain fashions of dress and loutish behaviour; analogous to the British ‘teddy boy’. Female of the species, widgie.
Both senses of the word bodgie in Australian English probably derive from an earlier (now obsolete) Australian noun bodger, meaning ‘something or someone false or unreliable, dodgy; something badly made or shoddy’. Thus in 1945 (our earliest citation) we have reference to some dodgy and unreliable Australian air force maintenance men: ‘This when the Bodgers, or sly guys place themselves in the most concealed ... places in the line’ (Biscuit Bomber Weekly: Magazine of the 1st Australian Air Maintenance Co., 18 February, p. 3).
The obsolete Aussie bodger probably derives from the British dialect verb to bodge ‘to make or put together clumsily, to botch (something) up’. (In fact bodge is an altered form of botch.) Thus in 1578 we have: ‘To bodge up a house which will never abide the trial’ (T. White, Sermon St. Paules Cross, p. 33). In Australian English in the 1940s and 1950s a bodger therefore was ‘something badly made or put together’ (like T. White’s botched up house which will fall apart when put to the test), ‘something (or occasionally someone) counterfeit, unreliable, or worthless’. (The noun was also used adjectivally.) Thus in 1950 Frank Hardy uses bodger to denote false or counterfeit votes: ‘This entailed the addition of as many more “bodger” votes as possible’ (Power without Glory, p. 383). In 1954 the word is used to denote false names: ‘Well, we stuck together all through the war—we was in under bodger names’ (Coast to Coast: Australian Short Stories 1953–54, p. 76). In 1966 S.J. Baker in his The Australian Language (ed. 2) pointed out that the term bodgie for an Aussie larrikin was not an Americanism (as had been assumed) but ‘was derived from an earlier underworld and Army use of bodger for something faked, worthless or shoddy. For example, a faked receipt or false name ... is a bodger; so is a shoddy piece of material sold by a door-to-door hawker’ (p. 292). By 1950 the word bodger was altered to bodgie, and this is now the standard form.
How dodgy is bodgie? A few citations should make it clear. In 1952 it is given the sense ‘neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring’: ‘An office in town has a mail file marked bodgies. It’s for letters that don’t seem to come under any of the regular classifications. The misfits, in other words’ (Sun (Sydney), 6 March, p. 1). In 1964 it is used for a bung instrument: ‘ “I’ve had that bloody altimeter!” shouted Ern. “It’s a bodgie. I’ll throw it in the bloody river” ’ (J. Iggulden, The Clouded Sky, p. 10). In 1967 it’s a boomerang that refuses to behave itself and bloody-well boomerang: ‘The Boss reckoned he could throw a boomerang. ... The Boss argued that he was getting all the bodgie ones, and that Jacky was using the only “come-back” ones’ (G. Jenkin, Two Years on Bardunyah Station, p. 27). One suspects that it was the Boss’s technique that was bodgie and not the boomerangs he used. In 1975 it is false receipt: ‘To avoid any suspicions in case they were picked up by the Transport Regulation Board, it was decided ... to take a “bodgy” receipt for the tyres with them’ (B. Latch & B. Hitchings, Mr X: Police Informer, p. 200). In 1978 it’s fraudulent number plates: ‘This heap is hot—else why did they give it a one-coat spray job over the original white duco and fix it with bodgie number plates?’ (O. White, Silent Reach, p. 173). In 1984 the bodgies are probably ghosts: ‘Allegations ... of branch-stacking and the use of hundreds of “bodgie” members in the electorate’ (Canberra Times, 27 August, p.1).
In the 1950s another sense of bodgie arose. The word was used to describe a young Aussie male, distinguished by his complete conformity to certain fashions of dress (described below) and loutish or rowdy behaviour—the antipodean counterpart of the pommie ‘teddy boy’. In 1950 the Sunday Telegraph (Sydney, 7 May, p. 47) obliged us with a description of his heraldic accoutrements, ‘the badge’ (as ’twere) ‘of all [his] tribe’: ‘The bizarre uniform of the “bodgey”—belted velvet cord jacket, bright blue sports shirt without a tie, brown trousers narrowed at the ankle, shaggy Cornel Wilde haircut.’ Apropos that shaggy hair, in 1951 the Sydney Morning Herald (1 February, p.1) grouched: ‘What with “bodgies” growing their hair long and getting around in satin shirts, and “weegies” [i.e. widgies] cutting their hair short and wearing jeans, confusion seems to be arising about the sex of some Australian adolescents.’ Apropos bodgie behaviour, Truth (Sydney, 1 January, p.38) grumped: ‘The current outbreak of vicious crimes by teenage louts who glory in the tag “Teddy Boy” or “Bodgie” is causing widespread concern.’ In 1979 K.R. Mackenzie laughed: ‘There was a bonzer bodgie,/He was a lovely male,/He whipped his widgie so humanely,/She didn’t even quail’ (Cosmic Fun, p. 14).
‘What’s a bodgie, Connie?’
‘A drongo who’s younger than a grub but thinks he’s old enough to have a widgie.’
(P. Radley, Jack Rivers and Me, 1981, p. 25)
This sense of bodgie seems to be an abbreviation of the word bodger with the addition of the ubiquitous Aussie -ie suffix. One explanation for the development of the sense ‘teenage lout’ was offered in the Age (Melbourne) in 1983: ‘Mr Hewett says his research indicates that the term “bodgie” arose around the Darlinghurst area in Sydney. It was just after the end of World War II and rationing had caused a flourishing black market in American-made cloth. “People used to try and pass off inferior cloth as American-made when in fact it was not: so it was called bodgie”, he says. “When some of the young guys started talking with American accents to big-note themselves they were called bodgies” ’ (12 August, p.2). In other words, they were fakes, counterfeit Americans, not the dinkum article.
This particular sense of bodgie (also in the formulation bodgie boy) belongs to the 1950s. The bodgie boy has long since gone where good bodgie boys go to (he probably wound up as a staid shiny bum and is now, as an old age pensioner, happily planting vegies). His place has been usurped these days by westies and bogans and chiggas and bevans and boons. But, I am glad to say, bodgie in the sense ‘fake, false, inferior, worthless’ is alive and flourishing still in Australian English. Floreat semper!