The Australian National Dictionary: Additions and Corrections, by James Lambert.
Additions to the Australian Lexicographical Record
In terms of Australian lexicography there have only
been a few works on historical principles. The first of these was Morris' Austral
English of 1898 –
much of which was incorporated into the Oxford English Dictionary and its supplements, which for many
years was the primary source for historical lexical information regarding the
Australian idiom. Then came Wilkes' Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms in 1978 (and now into its fourth
edition). All of these were largely superseded by Ramson's Australian
National Dictionary in
1988. This is now the primary source, though it still needs to be supplemented
by the various editions of Wilkes, who draws his boundaries for what an
"Australianism" is with a different pen. In addition to these Gary
Simes' Dictionary of Australian Underworld Slang of 1993 provided numerous
predatings as well as well-researched entries on a number of terms hitherto
unrecognised as Australian in origin.
During 2003-4 I was engaged upon writing the
Australian entries for the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and
Unconventional English (forthcoming 2005) for the publishers Routledge. This required 4000
entries with date of first occurrence and supporting citations. Only words that
were in use after 1945 were of interest; terms that had dropped out of usage
before that time were not included. In order to do this I embarked on a reading
program and amassed a citation collection of over 35000 records, upon which I
could base my entries. As would be expected I happened upon a number of odd
pieces of information that can be added to that which is represented in the
various historical works mentioned above.
I was fortunate enough to "inherit"
a handwritten citation collection from Ted Hartley. In 1944 Hartley authored a
glossary of prison slang which was discovered amongst the papers of Kylie
Tennant by Gary Simes. This glossary was reproduced, along with another, in
Simes' Dictionary of Australian Underworld Slang (1993). However, Hartley had also
read widely in Australian literature and had his own citation collection based
on this reading. When Hartley passed away in 2001 this citation collection was
only one small item of a large collection of material that was to be sold off
by the executor of his will. It was offered to a book dealer named Peter
Tinslay who declined to take it on the grounds that he could not envisage any
commercial value for it. As luck would have it Peter was a personal friend of
mine and so was able to say that he knew of a person who might be interested in
taking the citation cards. My oath he did! In fact, as the executor explained
to me, since he hadn't been able to sell the collection, if I had not taken
them then they would have been consigned to the tip! The thought of all those
citations, collected by a true enthusiast, selected by a true blue Aussie slang
speaker, painstakingly handwritten and diligently maintained over a period of
years, ending up as landfill – well, it doesn't bear thinking about.
The Hartley collection does have some drawbacks.
Firstly, Hartley's handwriting is chicken scratch of the highest order, and
deciphering it is a type of torture. My own hand is pretty poor, and far be it
from me to judge too harshly, but, it really has to be seen to be believed.
Secondly, Hartley did not include on his citation cards the year of the edition
he used. This means that the page numbers given are a bit iffy. That is, if you
happen to have the same edition, then all is okay, but if not, then the page
numbers most probably won't match up. I assume that Hartley had the necessary
information either written down somewhere, or that he still had the books
themselves, but alas, the information did not come down to me. This is of
course only a minor problem – anyone who really wants to track down one of
Hartley's citations can guesstimate for the edition they have, search through
different editions, or simply read the entire text.
I have since passed the Hartley collection onto the
Australian National Dictionary Centre where it will be kept as a separate
collection.
In some ways the Australian National Dictionary has become the central repository
of lexicographical quotations for Australianisms. No doubt the next edition
will incorporate all new findings revealed in Simes' work, and also those appearing
in the later editions of Wilkes. So much the better if all relevant information
is available in one reference work.
Aboriginal Act n. any of various legislative acts concerning
the control of the Aboriginal population by government.
1975 Xavier Herbert Poor Fellow My
Country 184 'You're well aware that no Aboriginal person is allowed to go
anywhere without the permission of a Protector. By transporting the boy without
that permission, you've committed an offence under the Aboriginal Act.'
1978 M.J. 'Chap' Burton Bush Pub (1983) iii. 24
[S]erving or permitting to be served a native Aboriginal, a person under the
Aboriginal Act, or a drunken person, or a person under the age of twenty-one,
all figured on a list of traps for the unwary publican.
1994 Herb Wharton Cattle Camp 183 Lotta them
black fellas they had there under the Aboriginal Act worked for nothing,
almost.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
Act, the n. the Aboriginal Act.
1963 Wal Watkins Race the Lazy River (1972) i. 17 'He
ought to be put under the Act, so he can't buy a drink.'
1994 Herb Wharton Cattle Camp 4 If an Aborigine
was placed under the Act, it meant that they were totally controlled by the
government's local agent.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
Anglo adj. of Anglo-Australian heritage.
1982 The Australian Children's
Folklore Newsletter #3 4/2 For a long time Anglo dominance in the
playground seems to have been the norm[.]
1983 Robert Drewe The Bodysurfers 52 [H]e was
regarded by the school's Latino and black drug and weaponry entrepreneurs as an
egregiously unhip Anglo novelty.
1985 Alma Aldrette in Joseph's Coat 34 Mrs
Castellanos thought that these Anglo girls were young and cheap.
1992 Sydney Star Observer 21 Feb 7 Material
in the campaign includes photographs of a muscle man with a drag queen on a
motorbike, an Anglo leatherman carrying a young Asian man[.]
1993 Sun-Herald 19 Sep 119 But my
family moved to an Anglo suburb when I was 10.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
Anglo n. a person of Anglo-Australian heritage.
Hence, the English language.
1982 Gerald Sweeney Invasion 139 No one seemed
to notice the bulk exodus of Australian Anglos.
ibid., 115 'To this day, they actually
think we give a damn about them. Because they're white and speak Anglo.
1985 Alma Aldrette in Joseph's Coat 21 To be equal to
or better than the Anglos.
1987 Sydney Morning Herald 28 Aug 1 At her
children's school, the Greek boys congregated in opposition to the so-called
'Anglos'.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
arse n. a fool; a 'dickhead'.
1944 Lawson Glassop We Were The Rats
III.
xl. 231 'You mean you'll act the silly arse and go out and get yourself
killed?'
1988 Clive Galea Slipper xxi. 145 'I've
fallen for the oldest worn-out trick in the book and if it hadn't been for
Greek Tommy I'd have gone on making a complete arse of myself,' he realised, as
he tossed and turned.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
ash v.t. to rid (a cigar or cigarette) of ash. Also, v.i., to drop cigar or
cigarette ash (onto something).
1930 Lennie Lower Here's Luck viii. 38 'Gee! I
remember once,' she said, ashing her cigarette on my coat-sleeve, 'he blew up a
balloon and sat on it.'
1935 Frederick J. Thwaites The
Melody Lingers xvii 256 Dale was silent for a moment, then he ashed his cigarette with
a hand that trembled slightly.
1953 [C.A. Wright] Caddie: A Sydney
Barmaid (1966) x. 43 He walked slowly over to the grate and ashed his
cigarette.
1961 Kenneth Cook Wake in Fright ii. 52 He realized
that he was standing staring at her and he sat down quickly, making a business
of ashing his cigarette.
1969 Frank Moorhouse Futility and
other animals 19 I carefully ashed my cigarette on the bed post, wondering what to
say.
1978 C.J. Koch The Year Of Living
Dangerously ii. 35 Hamilton ashed his cigar, and studied the end of it for some
moments without speaking.
1989 'Dame Edna Everage'
My Gorgeous Life 98 'Roy, get our coronation ashtray for Leslie
prithee, or he'll be ashing all over the carpet.'
1990 Ignatius Jones True Hip 127 Women whose
clothes are obviously Works of Art - Heaven help you if you laugh hysterically
when someone ashes on them and they catch fire.
1996 Sponge Magazine (Sydney) [32]/2
She wanted a cigarette just so she could ash on the deodorant.
2003 The Chaser (Sydney) Nov 3/4
It has now been revealed Melbourne was only awarded the Games after the
Australian representative ashed his cigar in the eight hour of the otherwise
silent Bidding Auction.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND. This seems a strange word to be an
Australianism since it is not slang, and the practice itself is in no way
unique, nevertheless, it appears that this verbal use is not present in other
Englishes.
the Ashes n. the trophy played for by Australian and
England in test cricket.
1882 Bulletin 9 Dec 13 [Ivo
Bligh] hoped before concluding their tour, to be able to regain the revered
ashes of English cricket which had been laid on the shelf in England by the
Australian Eleven.
Notes: Predating AND 1883.
Aussie n. a pizza with bacon (or ham) and eggs.
1992 Casa Cordobes Pizzeria menu (Sydney) aussie ..... $12.90 $15.90 $18.90 (Bacon
and Egg).
2004 Eat-A-Pizza menu (Darwin) aussie: Onion, Bacon & Egg.
2004 La Venezia Pizza menu (Kingston) aussi: [sic] bacon, eggs, onion, tomato & cheese.
2004 Mojo's Weird Pizza menu (Melbourne) aussie: Ham & Egg.
2004 Pedro's Pit menu (Melbourne) aussie: tomato, cheese, ham, bacon &
egg.
2004 John's Pizza menu (Coober Pedy, SA)
aussie: Tomato, cheese, ham, egg,
bacon.
Notes: Although a standard item of pizzeria cuisine throughout the
entire country, this little gem seems to have entirely escaped the notice of
lexicographers.
Australian n. a pizza with bacon (or ham) and eggs.
1992 Cyclopes Pizza menu(Sydney) australian ..... $8.50 $11.00 $13.70
Tomato, Cheese, Ham, Egg, Onions.
1992 Dulwich Hill Pizza menu (Sydney) australian: Ham, Onion, Egg, Double
Cheese.
2004 Normanville Fish Shop &
Pizza menu (SA) australian: Ham,
Bacon & Cheese.
Notes: See above.
Australiana n. a pizza with bacon (or ham) and eggs.
1992 Torino Pizzeria menu (Sydney) australiana: Bacon, Egg, $8.60 $9.40 $12.00.
1992 Benito Pizza menu (Sydney) 5 Australiana:
Bacon, Onion, Egg.
2004 Crows Nest Pizzeria, Kebabs
& Pasta menu (Sydney) australiana: Ham, onion and
eggs.
2004 Pizzeria Rio menu (Sydney) Australiana: Ham,
bacon, onion & egg.
Notes: Mock-Italian; see above.
Australianese n. Australian English or slanguage.
1978 Patsy Adam-Smith The ANZACS x. 102 Anzac
burial parties greeted the enemy with odds and ends of Arabic phrases, and with
Australianese that must have been incomprehensible to them.
Notes: Postdating AND 1965.
babbling brook n. a cook.
1905 Duke Tritton in John Meredith Learn
To Talk Old Jack Lang 15 No doubt about it, my Mary is a bottling babbling
brook.
Notes: Predating AND 1913.
back of beyond n. remote area.
1879 Catherine Helen Spence Handfasted V. vii. 320 'No but I mean the finding out of relatives and friends at
what Papa would call "the back of beyond". That was quite a new experience.'
Notes: Predating AND 1888.
bag of fruit n. rhyming slang for 'suit'.
1924 Gilbert H. Lawson A Dictionary
of Australian Words and Terms 11 bag
of fruit – A suit.
1965 John O'Grady Aussie English 13 bag of fruit. A suit. An abomination
which, with a tie, is still worn in Australia, even in summer. But the further
north you go, the fewer will you see. And right up 'the top end', it would be
difficult to find a man who owns one.
1984 'Ken Oathe' The Real Australian
Bloke's Guide To Survival 19 For weddings, christenings and funerals he's got
the maroon bag of fruit and the shiny, copper-coloured Raoul Merton lace-ups
1991 Rex Mossop The Moose That
Roared xi. 137 Imagine the problems he presented to the French who were trying
to make some sense of 'tip the bucket', 'bag of fruit' and 'tit for tat'.
1994 Rex Hunt Tall Tales - and True 94 'I had to wear
this bag of fruit to get into the member's,' I told them.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
bagman n. a bookmaker.
1953 T.A.G. Hungerford Riverslake vi. 98 'If I meet
any bagmen on the way, I'll themm 'em where to come.'
1956 Vince Kelly The Bogeyman xiv. 182 They had
worked up a good connection with punters, who were enticed by the offer
generally of a point above the odds being shouted in the ring by the registered
bagmen.
1966 James Holledge The Great
Australian Gamble xiv. 140 At the end of the day Mr. Wilson, who had
kept betting and doubling up, had accumulated liabilities of £2000 with the
bagman.
1981 Gerald Sweeney The Plunge xiii. 173 'They
will want specimen original signatures of the bagmen.'
1995 Crackers Keenan Australia's
Funniest Racing Yarns (2003) xvii. 113 One thing about the bagmen, they'll
always tell you when they've lost.
Notes: Not in AND – except as bracketed citation 1972. The AND does
record the other meaning of "bookmaker's clerk".
bags v.t. to reserve by making the first claim.
[1924 Mary Grant Bruce Billabong's
Daughter ii. 45 'Jim wanted to tell you, but I said it wasn't fair,' said Wally
laughing. 'It's quite enough for you two to own him, so I bagged telling the
story.']
1944 Lawson Glassop We Were The Rats
III.
xxxv. 198 'To show you I trust them I'll go first.' 'No, you won't,' said Eddie
quickly. 'I bags first.'
1965 Randolph Stow The
Merry-Go-Round in the Sea vi. 76 'I bags going in the transport,' he shouted,
listening still to the sea, distantly praying.
1974 Phillip Adams The Unspeakable
Adams 53 Bags: Not to be confused with school bag; a method of staking a claim
as in 'I bags that'.
1976 David Ireland The Glass Canoe 103 'Bag's first
shot.'
1981 Weekend Australian 7-8 Mar Magazine
4 Someone must tell him the only thing wrong with Gunston's Australia is
Gunston. Bags you do it.
1998 Phillip Gwynne Deadly Unna? xv. 114 'Didn't
think you was coming,' said Dumby. 'But I bagsed you this chair just in case.'
2003 Sydney Morning Herald 15 Mar Good
Weekend 13/2 In our house, whoever got a chair first could keep it for the whole
night provided they said 'I bags this' if they went to the toilet or answered
the door.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
bar, it's all over ~ the shouting phr. it is over for all
practical purposes.
1951 Dal Stivens Jimmy Brockett 76 Just as I
thought, it was all over bar the shouting.
1953 Nevil Shute In the Wet 321 'Iorwerth
Jones' Government has resigned,' she said, 'or it's resigning now. It's all
over bar the shouting.'
1969 Alexander Buzo Norm and Ahmed (1973) 12 'I
always played fair, but if they ever mucked me about, biff! Send for the
cleaners. All over bar the shouting.'
1971 Frank Hardy The Outcasts of
Foolgarah xii. 166 It was all over bar the shouting, but they wrangled on until
late afternoon.
1973 Kit Denton The Breaker 246 'Well, it's
all over bar the shouting, you fellows. What are you going to do when they've
apologized and let you out?'
1975 Xavier Herbert Poor Fellow My
Country 1253 'Looks as if it's all over bar the shouting.'
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
beaut adv. excellently, splendidly.
1969 Geoff Wyatt Saltwater Saints v. 105 She danced
real beaut, as Danny said, and had a certain flair for challenging looks, which
are there to be challenged.
1981 Paul Radley Jack Rivers and Me 162 'You sang
beaut tonight, Muriel. Better'n Maureen.'
1982 Nicholas Hasluck The Hand That
Feeds You 156 'Picture frames burn beaut', he said.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
beaut int. excellent!
[1953 Nourma Handford Carcoola
Holiday ix. 146 'That's gidgee, not bad. I must get you some ring gidgee. I
know a bloke in town who can make anything out of it. Beaut. You'll like it.']
1971 Frank Hardy The Outcasts of
Foolgarah 89 'Beaut, Florrie, you always were handy with the pen. Who'll we send
it to?'
1985 Barry Dickins What the Dickins 140 You check the
lamb; done to a turn. Cut off a bit. Beaut, beaut. It's ready now.
1991 Tim Winton Cloudstreet 287 Rose felt her
cheeks glowing. Beaut!
Notes: The AND notes that beaut can be used as an exclamation, but
its earliest citation is from 1981.
billy n. a bong for smoking marijuana.
1994 Ad News 28 Jan 19 Billy -
Vessel for marijuana consumption.
1996 Underground Surf Aut 14 Most
surfers don't choose these destructive options: in fact, we're a pretty mellow
crew who rarely indulge in anything more than the occasional beer or billy.
1996 Revolver (Sydney) 12 Nov
21/1 Where's the remote, pass me the billy.
Notes: A new application of this classic Australianism.
black guts n. the stomach.
1978 Robbie Cass High Jinks Down
Under 124 I better shoot through quick. Those creeps might get a few more
beers into their black guts and decide to come back for another go.
1979 Derek Maitland Breaking Out 304 'Cheers! "Get
it into your black guts", as my father used to say when he partook of alcoholic
beverages.'
1986 Frank Hardy Hardy's People 86 He pulled two
tinnies out of his Esky, opened them and gave me one. 'Get that into your black
guts,' he demanded.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND. I suspect that this is probably quite a bit
older, possibly dating back to the 1950s.
black stump n. remote area.
1953 Nourma Handford Carcoola Holiday 207 'I reckon a
boss gets his reputation in depression times and every crow and every water
carrier this side of the Black Stump knows old McCairn's not a bad bloke.'
Notes: Predating AND 1957.
blowey n. a blowfly.
1902 Barbara Baynton Bush Studies 78 'No blowey
carn't get in there, eh?' the dog looked at the meat uncritically, but
critically noted the resting place of two disturbed 'bloweys'.
Notes: Predating AND 1916.
blue v.i. to fight.
1962 Criena Rohan The Delinquents 85 'Shit! you're a
mess, kid,' she said. 'You can go. I'll give you that; but you have to spot too
much weight. You're too titchy to blue on.'
Notes: Predating AND 1969.
blue v.t. to squander.
1874 Marcus Clarke His Natural Life 50 'Vater!' cried
the little cockney. 'Give us a drop o' vater, for mercy's sake. I haven't
moist'ned my chaffer this blessed day.' 'Half a gallon a day, bo', and no
more,' says a sailor next him. 'Yes, what have yer done with yer half-gallon,
eh?' asked the Crow derisively. 'Someone stole it,' said the sufferer. 'He's
been an' blued it,' squealed someone. 'Been an' blued it to buy a Sunday veskit
with! Oh, ain't he a vicked young man?'
Notes: Predating AND 1881.
bolt n. an escape, a flight.
1812 James Hardy Vaux glossary: A sudden
escape of one or more prisoners from a place of confinement is termed a
bolt.
Notes: Predating AND 1838.
boggabri n. any of various plants.
1907 Barbara Baynton Human Toll (in The
Portable Barbara Baynton) xiv. 273 'She wants me t' go 'untin' fer
boggabri down on ther billabongs,' she complained to Ursula.
Notes: Interdating AND 1893 <> 1959.
Bondi cigar n. a piece of human excrement floating in
the water.
1996 Tracks (Sydney) Jun 35/1
Out in the surf, discretely sprinkle a handful of Imitation Turd Pellets around
the take-off and watch the reaction of your fellow surfers as the pellets
expand into realistic-looking Bondi cigars!
1997 Sydney Morning Herald 8 Nov Good Weekend
31 Australians outside the brown zone of the Bondi cigar seem remarkably
sanguine about the continued pumping of sewage and domestic waste water into
our seaways.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
bonza noun a variety of apple.
1999 Sun-Herald 28 Feb Tempo 20 She'll be apples!
[heading] ...Bonza: Good eating, crisp, red apple. Harvested April-May.
2001 Sun-Herald 21 Jan Tempo 12 There are around 7,000 different
types of apples grown around the globe and in Australia the most popular
varieties are red delicious, jonathan, braeburn, bonza, pink lady, golden
delicious, fuji, gala and granny smith.
2004 www.batlowapples.com.au/barrel/body.asp The Bonza apple originated in
Batlow and was cultivated by chance over 25 years ago . The Bonza variety has a
green/cream background colour with a 50-60% red blush. The variety is
characterised by a very white firm flesh with a sweet flavour, and is
particularly good for cutting and in salads as it tends to keep its colour
after being cut. Bonzas are available from early March through to early
September.
Notes:
Not in Wilkes, AND.
boofhead n. a person with an oversized head; hence, a
fool, idiot, dimwit.
1941 Baker
Notes: Predating AND which quotes Baker 1945. A number of examples of
this nature – where a term is recorded earliest in Baker, but it appears in an
earlier edition of Baker – are recorded in this paper, and some have been noted
by Simes.
boofheaded adj. fat-headed; dimwitted.
1942 Lennie Lower Lennie Lower's
Annual: A Side Splitter 9 I could have thought of three or four snappy
comebacks to a boof headed remark like that.
Notes: Predating AND 1965.
booze hound n. a drunkard.
1905 Duke Tritton in John Meredith Learn
To Talk Old Jack Lang 14 I can go into the rubbity dub and have a
lemonade, breasting the near and far with booze hounds drinking Tom Thumb,
young and frisky, oh my dear, or Huckleberry Finn[.]
Notes: Predating earliest US usage in Lighter 1911.
boss n. the owner or man in charge of a large rural property
1895 A.B. Paterson in Collected
Verse 42 'We will show the boss how a shear blade shines / When we reach those
ewes,' said the two Devines.
1902 A.B. Paterson Rio Grande and
Other Verses 84 But, Boss, you'd better not fight with me – it wouldn't be fair nor
right.
1902 Barbara Baynton Bush Studies 105 'Boss in,
Lizer?'
1905 in Stewart and Keesing Old Bush
Songs 181 The boss is expected home by the next mail / And the missus, confound
her and dang her, / Of course with her husband is sure to prevail; / What woman
could not in her anger?
1925 Erle Cox Out of the Silence 253 'So I pipes up
and asks if the boss is at 'ome.'
1936 John C. Downie Galloping Hoofs vii. 145 Mildred
and Bill were going with the Boss and Missus by car[.]
1938 Xavier Herbert Capricornia 149 When Morris
Hughes came in with the news he merely said, 'Big fella war him finis, Boss.
Missus him say you come longa house for makim friend.'
1947 Ion L. Idriess Over the Range i. 5 Above all,
she must not tell the boss of any little irregularity she may see.
1959 Arthur Upfield Bony and the
Mouse (1961) vi. 50 'Look, the boss is all right.'
1962 Joan Lindsay Time Without
Clocks (1979) 61 The man who came to fix the tank or to see the Boss about the
sawbench or the dog tax ended up with tea at the large wooden table.
1965 Frank Dalby Davidson Wells of
Beersheba 179 Mrs Vachell came to the door. 'G'day, missus,' said Tom,
friendlily. 'Where's the boss?' It was the time-honoured salutation and
question.
1978 M.J. 'Chap' Burton Bush Pub (1983) xi. 104
'The boss came in about six o'clock and seemed quite happy for me to stay for a
meal.'
1982 Les A. Murray The Vernacular
Republic 75 'The boss at home, Missus?'
Notes: Not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND. Country properties are
generally run by the "missus", who has control of the homestead, and the
"boss", who has control of everything else. I believe it to be a particularly
Australian application of both of these words.
bowlo n. a bowling club.
1986 Tracks (Sydney) Feb 3/4
Next, it's off to the local, pub or bowlo[.]
2004 LGnet - Local Government
Network website (www.lgnet.com.au) Some people reckon the Queen shouldn't run
the country because they never see her down at the Beresfield Bowling Club. But
if the Queen lived in Australia, she would spent every night down at the Bero
Bowlo and she would win heaps of meat trays.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
bowyang n. used as a symbol for manual labour.
1944 Sunday Telegraph 13 Feb 4 Mr
Taylor said yesterday that the Labor Party had progressed to the stage where
brains, and not bowyangs, should be regarded as the badge of the workers'
representatives.
Notes: Predating AND 1951.
breast v.t. to approach (a bar).
1905 Duke Tritton in John Meredith Learn
To Talk Old Jack Lang 15 I can go into the rubbity dub and have a
lemonade, breasting the near and far with booze hounds drinking Tom Thumb,
young and frisky, oh my dear, or Huckleberry Finn[.]
Notes: Predating AND 1909.
Brisso n. Brisbane, Qld; a person from Brisbane.
Also, Briso, Brizzo.
1972 John O'Grady It's Your Shout,
Mate! vi. 69 'Was you in Brizzo when that Melbourne mob took it over?'
1984 Sandra Jobson Blokes 66 'G'day there,
Briso Wankas!'
1985 Phil Jarratt Surfing Dictionary 12 Brizzoes are
actively discouraged from leaving the city limits on weekends by such measures
as slashing the tyres of their panel vans.
1985 Tracks (Sydney) Oct 5
Firstly, to mother fucker fraud fighter from Brisso (what a dump)[.]
1987 Tracks (Sydney) Dec 5/1
Well, the Sunshine and Gold Coasts have their 'Brisoes', Sydney has their
'Westies'.
1996 Underground Surf Aut 20/3 Call your
macho festival 'Brissos suck more piss than Bondi backpackers' and get XXXX to
sponsor the whole bash.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND. When referring to a person this is a common
derogatory term used by Sunshine and Gold Coast residents who resent
Brisbanites visiting their local areas.
Brissy n. Brisbane.
1960 J.E. Macdonnell Don't Gimme the
Ships v. 75 'Did I ever tell yer,' Splinter asked, 'about that night in
Brissy when me an' the Baron crashed the wardroom party...?'
1966 Sidney J. Baker The Australian
Language (2nd ed.) iv. 90 Thus, although Brissie is
the common spelling of the hypocorism for
Brisbane it is always pronounced as though the spelling were Brizzie.
1974 Thea Astley A Kindness Cup 78 'She's made me
a grand-dad three times over. In Brissy now, happily married and all.'
1990 Sam Watson The Kadaitcha Sung 16 'All we do know
is that old Ed just keeps telling the doctors in Brissie that he's got a burn
that won't go away.'
1996 Slam Apr 26 Of course,
Brissy's not everyone's cup of tea.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
brown n. a brown snake.
1978 M.J. 'Chap' Burton Bush Pub x. 88 'Besides you
need some plonk about the place, especially in the summer when them tigers and
browns are about.'
1981 Jack Bennett Gallipoli iii. 65 'Tigers,
browns, death adders,' said Archy[.]
2004 The Age (Melbourne) 19 Aug
Green Guide 3/4 I have pulled really great hormone growth gear from a deadly
brown I have tethered to the Hills Hoist in the backyard.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND. The AND covers the elliptical usage of tiger = tiger snake
(see tiger below), but not the brown.
bungy adj. in ill health.
1902 Barbara Baynton Bush Studies 57 She'd have
bungy eyes, if she didn't. If she was asleep, why did she not close them?
1907 Barbara Baynton Human Toll (in The
Portable Barbara Baynton) xiv. 265 'Missus, if you was t' cut 'ome like
blazes, and clap a bit er raw meat on your eyes, they woulden' go black nur
bungy.'
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND – but is it just a Bayntonism?
burn n. a cigarette.
1960 J.E. Macdonnell Don't Gimme the
Ships ix. 132 'Hiya, cobber. Have a burn?' Windy shook his head at the
proffered packet.
Notes: Predating US usage in Lighter 1971.
bush woman n. a woman who lives in the bush; a woman
accustomed to the harsh life of the bush.
1898 Edward Dyson Below And On Top 'The Whim Boy'
[Project Gutenberg] This meant a walk back of eleven miles 'by moonlight
alone,' but Jem was superior to all feminine weaknesses, and too thorough a
bush-woman to let a trifle like that trouble her.
1901 Henry Lawson Joe Wilson and His
Mates 'Water Them Geraniums' 69 Most bush-women get the nagging habit.
1917 Barbara Baynton Trooper Jim
Tasman (in The Portable Barbara Baynton) 92 I saw all those silent bush
women. Early pioneers, who had left father and mother, and sister and brother
and friends, to face the great unknown as mate to their man[.]
1936 John C. Downie Galloping Hoofs 124 Many bush
women are left at the little boundary camps, hundreds of miles from their
nearest neighbour, while their menfolk are away for weeks or even months, on
end, working cattle or prospecting for gold.
1959 Mary Durack Kings in Grass
Castles xii. 123 Grandmother considered herself lucky to have had a white woman
with her at a time when many bush women had no help at all.
1975 Xavier Herbert Poor Fellow My
Country 495 'I presume you meant he wants just a bush-woman for a wife. They do
say, you know, that the trouble between him and his ex-wife was that she wanted
to be the lady, and he wouldn't be in it.'
1983 Rocky Marshall in New Axe
Handle 79 Grandmother was reared in the bush under primitive pioneering
conditions. Dad chided that she had cut her teeth on stirrup leather. She was a
top rate horse handler and bushwoman.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
but adv though.
1898 Edward Dyson 'A Visit To Scrubby Gully' in Below and On Top
[H]e worked on steadily, uncomplainingly, till the boy with the unique freckles
came hurrying in with the intelligence that the old horse was 'havin' a fit'r
somethin'.' Jeans did not swear. He said 'Is he but?' and put aside his
harness, and went out, like a man for whom life has no surprises.
Notes: AND first two citations are 1853 then 1938 – which is a big gap,
over 80 years. However there is some dubiety about the 1853 cite since it is
unquestionably ambiguous. The text runs "The hero of (not a hundred fights, but)
Whitechapel..." which can obviously be read two ways. This Dyson citation from
1898 is unambiguous, plugs the gap a bit, and lends some support to the 1853.
cactus, in the phr. in a bad way.
1941 Baker
Notes: Predating AND (citing Baker 1943). See note at boofhead.
Calcutta sweep(s) n. a type of sweepstakes run on
horseraces. See first citation for explanation.
1896 Nat Gould Town and Bush xiv. 223 Calcutta
sweeps are often drawn on the race, at the principle hotel in town, the night
before the event is run. The names of the horses are drawn by the chairman,
each subscriber having put in a pound share. The horses are then put up for
auction. Suppose a man draws Daylight; he has paid a pound into the sweep; if
Daylight is favourite for the race, perhaps he will be run up to ten pounds
more before he can buy his horse in, or he may let it go if he so desires. If
Daylight is a rank outsider, the drawer may feel inclined to sell at any price
in order to get rid of it.
1933 Samuel Griffiths A Rolling
Stone on the Turf vii. 113 At that time most of the betting on races
was done through the Calcutta sweeps held over-night on all of the events to be
decided next day. These sweeps each ran into thousands of rupees, and the
owners naturally tried to buy their horses at the best possible price.
ibid. xii. 199 If you should receive a
circular relating to a 'Calcutta sweep' on the Viceroy's Cup or English Derby,
addressed from 'Chandernagore, India', the best thing you can do with it is to
promptly consign it to the waste-paper basket.
1933 Raymond Spargo Betting systems
Analysed 56 Who among us – even the greatest antagonist of gambling – could
resist the first prize ticket in "a certain Tasmanian consultation,"
the Golden Casket, State lotteries or the colossal Calcutta sweep?
1977 Hugh Buggy The Real John Wren 147 About this
time, by a decision of justice Hood, Calcutta sweeps were made illegal in
Melbourne, while Police Inspector Laurence Gleeson startled the righteous by
declaring that the big racecourses were infinitely worse in fostering gambling
than the pony courses.
1981 Murray Pioneer 25 June 6 Mr.
Pfeiffer said other major projects included raising $765 from a Golf Day; $830
from a Calcutta Sweep and the erection of SA, Victorian and NSW border signs on
the river bank.
1982 Joe Andersen Winners Can Laugh viii. 115 The
Bellbird Gold Cup was run in two divisions and it was decided to run two
Calcutta Sweeps on them.
1995 Crackers Keenan Australia's Funniest
Racing Yarns (2003) xvi. 102 So I went back up the bush but my step-uncle had
organised a Calcutta on Cup Eve[.]
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND. As the citations from Samuel Griffiths
show, this practice originated in India during the British occupation, but
according to Kingsley Bolton's Accent database, which has 25 million words of
the Times of India, the term is no longer used there. Commonly shortened
to Calcutta.
captain n. the person shouting drinks.
1953 Sidney J. Baker Australia Speaks 137 captain, the leader of a
company of drinkers, especially one who assumes the privilege of paying for
others' drinks.
Notes: Predating AND 1961. See note at boofhead.
carol v.i. of the Australian magpie, to make its characteristic
call. Hence, the verbal noun, carolling.
1932 Ion L. Idriess Flynn of the
Inland vii. 55 [A] magpie carolled joyously: crickets were
singing their hearts out.
1933 G.B. Lancaster Pageant I. vii. 120
Coming home through a dewy morning of bush scents and magpie carolling Mab had
been stimulated into a decision.
1954 Judah Waten The Unbending 22 Birds called
and magpies carolled and quarrelled.
1955 Alan Marshall I Can Jump
Puddles v. 47 Sometimes it raised its head and bellowed hoarsely, and carolling
magpies ceased their song and flew hurriedly away.
1960 Sutton Woodfield A for Artemis xvii. 168 Only the
big river gum had birds in its hair; the carolling magpies who love the wind
and high weather.
1965 Frank Dalby Davison The Wells
of Beersheba 229 A magpie carolling from the top of a dead gumtree.
1975 Xavier Herbert Poor Fellow My
Country 977 The sound of the water was like laughter, in which was faintly
mingled music, which was the carolling of butcher-birds somewhere back amidst
the limestone masses.
1977 Helen Garner Monkey Grip 245 The
absent-minded carolling of magpies dropped out of the pine trees half a mile
away.
1983 in New Axe Handle 43 From the lofty
branches of a gum tree a pair of magpies carolled their greeting.
1985 Hyllus Maris and Sonia Borg Women
of the Sun 167 Magpies were carolling; a kookaburra sat perched on the lowest
branch of a tall tree and studied her, head cocked to one side.
1987 Rodney Hall Kisses of the Enemy
IV.
lxxxii. 477 Magpies carolled mocking Amens.
2000 Michael Morcombe Field Guide to
Australian Birds 312 Australian Magpie...Voice: strong rich and
varied carolling, with notes ranging from high and clear to deep and mellow.
2004 Sydney Morning Herald 28 Sept 14/4 Along
with their distinctive appearance and cheeky nature, magpies are most famous
for their calls, especially their carolling which has been measured by Kaplan
at up to 127 decibels – similar in noise to a motorcycle in full pelt.
Carolling is the magpie's answer to almost every property dispute.
Notes: Not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND. The Australian magpie, Gymnorhina
tibicen, has a wide variety of calls, including alarm signals and subdued
sub-songs – however, the term carol is reserved for its well-known beautiful
vocalisations commonly heard at dawn and dusk. As lovely as they sound to
humans, to other magpies they are a territorial warning. The use by Xavier
Herbert for the grey butcherbird's call is probably a once-off.
centre n. (in two-up) the bets placed with the
person spinning the coins.
1911 Louis Stone Jonah 160 He threw the
kip and the pennies into the centre, and took his place on a low seat at the
head of the ring.
Notes: Predating AND 1931.
Chinaman, must have killed a phr. a phrase noting bad luck.
[1910 Henry Lawson The Rising of the
Court 299 'What have I been up to?' 'Killin' a Chinaman. Go to sleep.']
1930 Vance Palmer The Passage 272 'But my luck's
out – I must have run over a Chinaman some time or other.'
1951 Dal Stivens Jimmy Brockett 184 'You're
restless, Jimmy,' Nan said, teasing me. 'Have you killed a Chinaman?'
1982 Joe Andersen Winners Can Laugh v. 58
Superstition plays an important part in the life of the racing fraternity. The
sighting of an oriental person before, during or after placing a bet is always
regarded as a sure sign that fortune will smile on you. (A run of bad luck is
usually attributed to the killing of one by the unlucky punter.)
1995 Paul Vautin Turn It Up! 62 'You've heard the
expression, 'You must have killed a Chinaman,' well I'm so out of luck that I reckon
in a past life I must have been a tank driver in Tiananmen Square or something
because I must have got dozens of 'em.'
1996 Tracks (Sydney) Jun 81/4
Young American Hank Mills wins the Rip Curl Pro Trials from Chris Davidson and
the luckless Nick 'I killed a Chinaman' Wood.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
chock-a-block adv (of a man) in flagrante delicto.
1969 Alexander Buzo Rooted 85 Bentley: How
do I know? I walked in on them, mate. Richard: And Simmo was... Bentley:
Chock-a-block.
Notes: Predating AND 1971.
choof off v.i. to leave.
1972 Arthur Chipper The Aussie
Swearer's Guide 77 get off my back: Like
choof off, this is a good dismissal phrase when someone is rubbishing or poking
borak or slinging off at you.
Notes: Predating AND 1977.
chook raffle n. a raffling of a chicken for fundraising.
1971 Sunday Australian 28 Feb 23/10
Chook raffles in pubs – and clubs – are the basic means of finance; at a profit
of no more than $2.20 a raffle, a lot of chooks are won and lost to provide a
club with the bulk of it's income.
Notes: Predating AND 1979.
chunder n. vomit.
1953 Sidney J. Baker Australia
Speaks 169 chunder, a noun, vomit.
Notes: Predating AND 1960. See note at boofhead.
clacker n. the anus; the backside.
1960 J.E. MacDonnell Don't Gimme the
Ships ix. 135 'Come on then up there, off your clackers!'
1994 Rex Hunt Tall Tales - and True 79 And it still
hurts to think of his size 12 boots right up my clacker.
1995 Paul Vautin Turn It Up! 95 Someone tell
me one thing that's good about sand. It gets so hot sometimes you can't even
walk on it, it gets into your eyes when it's blowy, it gets stuck to the hairs
on my back, it gets up your nose, in your ears and of course, worst of all, it
gets up your clacker.
2001 Sydney Scope Magazine Feb 2/2 [S]he
relentlessly interrogates notions of immutable identity AND takes a great big
red ribbon out of her clacker.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND. Probably from the clacking sound when
farting.
clock n. a one year prison sentence.
1941 Baker
Notes: Predating AND 1950. See note at boofhead.
cockroach n. a lump of brown sugar.
1907 Barbara Baynton Human Toll (in The
Portable Barbara Baynton) iii. 163 'I will, for if she done a thing
like that she deserves a real good cockroach,' said Fanny, groping in the sugar
basin for a lump.
Notes: Interdating AND 1903 <> 1921. I should add that both my
mother and my grandmother used this term and I remember being given a cockroach
in the 1970s. Such lumps are rarely found these days – the art of sugar
refining must have progressed over the last few decades.
connie (agate) n. a type of playing
marble made from agate.
1894 Ethel Turner Seven Little
Australians vii. 101 He lost ten, exclusive of his best agate, fought a boy who had
unlawfully possessed himself of his most cherished 'conny,' and returned home
with saddened spirits an hour later, only to find as he went through the gate
that he had lost Aldith's dainty little note.
1916 Norman Lindsay in The Comic Art
of Norman Lindsay 211 Teacher: 'Well, what's the matter now?' Small
Boy: 'Please, I've swallered Brown's conny agate, an' he wants it back.'
1948 Ruth Park The Harp In The South
xxi.
215 'And you had three marbles in a flour bag, a yeller connie, and a sort of
stripy white one, and a big clay one[.]'
1976 David Ireland The Glass Canoe 103 'Mine's the
blood alley.' 'No it's not, yours is the connie agate.'
1980 Clive James Unreliable Memoirs ii. 19 My
collection of marbles consisted mainly of priceless connie agates handed down
by Grandpa.
ibid. Years older than I, Mick dated up
clay-dabs against my connies.
Notes: Predating AND 1966 (citing Baker). Plus some extra evidence.
These marbles were generally considered to be the premier marbles.
cracker, not worth a phr. entirely worthless.
1942 Gavin Casey It's Harder for
Girls 126 'He's got guts, anyway,' said Sayers. 'I didn't think he was worth
a cracker.'
Notes: Predating AND 1953.
crib v.i. to cheat by encroaching over the line when shooting in marbles. Hence,
the verbal noun, cribbing.
1974 Phillip Adams The Unspeakable
Adams 50 Fannany-wacking: Cribbing at alleys.
1985 Cathy Hope Themes from the
Playground 3 Our rules included no 'fananny wacking', fudging or cribbing. Fananny
wacking is pushing your hand forward as you fire. You have to keep your hand
still. You weren't allowed to 'crib' over the line.
2004 Australian Word Map (www.abc.net.au/wordmap)
Part of the litany at the beginning of a game in primary school in Melbourne in
the early 60s. You'd warn the opposing player by saying 'No cribs' or 'No
cribbing'.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
crook adv. badly.
1959 Arthur Upfield Bony and the
Mouse vi. 48 'He was in my hair, but not that crook that I'd bump him.'
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
dart n. a scheme or idea.
1947 Norman Lindsay Halfway to
Anywhere v. 79 'Trucking's my dart too.'
Notes: Postdating AND 1918 – but referring to late 19th century.
day int. an abbreviated form of G'day.
1902 Barbara Baynton Bush Studies 118 'D'y ter
yous,' said Alick, blinking his bungy eyes, and smiling good-naturedly at the
parson and at the grazier.
1903 Joseph Furphy Such Is Life 9 ''Day, chaps,'
said Rufus, as he joined us.
1903 'Steele Rudd' Our New Selection
(1984)
182 'G' day,' Dad said. ''Day.'
1907 Barbara Baynton Human Toll (in The
Portable Barbara Baynton) vi. 188 The again he smiled, till a dusty
swagman dumped down his heavy swag beside the bar, and fixed his seeing eye
steadfastly on the rotund proprietor, then greeted, 'Day, mate.'
1938 Norman Lindsay Age of Consent iii. 19 'Day,' he
said, to break the suspense of being looked at. 'Day to you,' said the trooper.
1957 'Nino Culotta' They're A Weird
Mob
viii. 107 'Gooday,' Joe said. 'Day.'
1959 Arthur Upfield Bony and the
Mouse (1961) vi. 45 'Day, Nat,' he greeted Bony[.]
1966 Graham McInnes Humping My Bluey
140
'Day, Young,' he said. 'How about a cuppa for me?'
1975 Xavier Herbert Poor Fellow My
Country 159 ''Day, Ned...'Day, Missus...Well, here she is, Lady Lindbrooke-Esk,
Lord Vaisey's intended.'
Notes: Not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
deadshit n. an objectionable person; a fuckwit.
1961 Geoff Mill Nobody Dies But Me (2003) 122 'And
you can tell him if he don't come up with some cash I'll trace the deadshit
through the Red Cross and leave a little bundle of bloody joy on his doorstep,
quickfuckinsmart.'
1971 Alex Buzo Macquarie 58 'The
revolution, you dead shit.'
1979 Derek Maitland Breaking Out 83 'Ratbags!' Bert
drawled. 'dead-shits, the bloody lot of you.'
1983 Helen Garner & Jennifer Giles Moving
Out
113 'Jesus, what a pack of dead shits', she said, in disgust.
1987 Kathy Lette, Girls' Night Out (1995) 106 As I
slammed the drawers of the filing cabinet, I told Aussie where I kept him filed
– under D for deadshit.
Notes: Not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
dead 'un n. a horse deliberately ridden to lose.
1877 J.S. James The Vagabond Papers (2nd series) 128
There were outlawed black-legs, men who subsist by getting up sham 'sweeps', or
laying against 'dead 'uns'; amongst their number, some who have broken all laws
human and divine, and should be hounded from society of even ordinary vicious
men.
Notes: Predating AND 1896.
death adder, to have ~ in your pockets phr. to be stingy.
1944 Lawson Glassop We Were The Rats
II.
xx. 118 'Why doancher buy a drink? Get them death adders outa ya pockets.'
1951 Dal Stivens Jimmy Brockett 230 Fuller was
meaner than Dargan, if that was possible. He had death adders in his pocket.
1965 John O'Grady Aussie English 53 If you won't
put your hand in your pocket, you have 'death adders in your kick', and are
afraid of being bitten. Characters with death adders in their kicks are 'lousy
bastards'.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
dickhead n. a fool.
1974 Barry Humphries A Nice Night's
Entertainment 147 They'll stitch you up, stick it up you and take you for a dead-set
dickhead.
Notes: Predating AND 1976. Note however that since AND was published in
1988 this term has been further pushed back in the US to 1962, as recorded in
Jonathan Lighter The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, and thus is
probably not an original Australianism.
Dickless Tracy n. a female cop.
1977 Jim Ramsey Cop It Sweet! 28 dickless tracy: Woman policeman.
Notes: Predating AND 1980.
dilly n. an aboriginal traditional bag.
1828 Journal of Charles Frazer in Aboriginal
Pathways (1983) 77 [A] DILLY or luggage-bag such as females carry, made of
leaves of XANTHORRHAEA, and strong enough to bear any weight.
Notes: Predating AND 1830. From an unverified citation card of Ted
Hartley's.
dinky adj. fair, reasonable; dinkum.
1942 Sun 17 Feb 4/3 Smith,
on being sentenced to three months gaol, said: 'If the Japs come a man might
get a fair, dinky go.'
Notes: This uncommon abbreviated variant of dinky-di is not recorded
elsewhere.
dip your eye phr. piss off, get fucked.
1952 T.A.G. Hungerford The Ridge and
the River 175 'I might go back to it for a while. I'll wait till some rich old
harlot trots in and starts to chuck her weight around, and then I'll just key
her up, good and hard. I'll say, "Listen, missus; you go and dip your eye!" and
then I'll blow. Oh boy, can't you see her?'
1953 T.A.G. Hungerford Riverslake ii. 23 'Dip your
eye!' Charlesworth called after them as they walked away.
1954 T.A.G. Hungerford Sowers of the
Wind xvi. 187 'Oh, dip your eye!' Stewart told him testily.
1972 Bruce Beresford and Barry
Humphries The Adventures of Barry McKenzie [film] 'Go and dip
your left eye in hot cocky cack.'
Notes: Not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND. Despite the fact that most of
the evidence presented here is from T.A.G. Hungerford, I believe this to be a
genuine Australian expression.
do v.t. to drink an alcoholic drink.
1911 Louis Stone Jonah 41 'Gawd, I'm
dry,' said Chook, yawning. 'I could do a beer.'
1979 Sam Weller Old Bastards I Have
Met
22 'Could you do a cold stubbie?'
Notes: Postdating AND 1899. Note that AND also labels this obsolete –
which is incorrect. It is very much still alive colloquially.
dob in v.t. to inform against someone.
1954 Eric Lambert The Veterans xiv. 206 'It'll
do no good abusing Lucky, or dobbing him in.'
Notes: Predating AND 1955.
Domainiac n. a vagrant of Sydney's Domain.
1933 Ernest O'Ferrall Stories by
"Kodak" 78 'I remember an abject jobbing gardener (he was a partially reformed
Domainiac) who used to infest the garden of a friend's house[.]'
Notes: Postdating AND 1903.
doodlem-buck n. See citation at toodlembuck.
doof n. pumping dance music.
1996 3-D World (Sydney) 1 Apr
44/1 'It also gives me a chance to put music together in a way where there's
room for space and atmospherics instead of relentless 'doof'.'
1998 Sydney Morning Herald 27 Mar 14 'Doof '
is a sound and a culture, not just some nerdy fashion statement. How could you
miss the sonic origins of the word 'doof '? Try saying 'doof doof doof doof '
out loud to yourself and you'll get the beat. Anyone who knows that joyously anarchic,
energising, trance-ey sound which reverberates periodically throughout
inner-city warehouses and brickpits, and at various rural haunts, can attest to
doof's rhythmic and spiritual dimensions.
1998 Sydney Morning Herald 21 Jun 17 Sharing
a house are 'clubber' Mark McKenna, 22, 'Goth' Steven Haynes, 19, and 'doof
feral' Leiziah Restall, 21.
ibid. Doofs are another term for
dance-club ravers, goths dress like members of the Addams Family and crusties
are also known as ferals, or New Age hippies.
1998 The Big Issue 7 Sep 6/2 Over the
past few years, 'doof' (as in techno: 'doof, doof, doof') music has begun to
feature.
1999 Three D World (Sydney) 17 May
64 What's the best thing about Sydney? The Doof scene keeps getting bigger.
2001 Sydney Scope Magazine Feb 2/1 Scope
sunnily affirms that Gras province populated by rhinestones, daquiri fuelled
parody and too-convivial doof.
Notes: A new Australianism. Occasionally does service to mean 'a
clubber' – but this is not the common meaning.
doofer n. a dance music aficionado.
1998 Sydney Morning Herald 27 Mar 14 Doof
crew are a motley crew, but many doofers' passions are directed as much at
social and environmental transformation, as at the pursuit of funky clothing
which is apparently doof's most visible attribute.
Notes: A new Australianism. Rare.
drey n. the nest constructed in the branches of a tree by the common ringtail
possum, Pseudocheirus pereginus.
1981 RGB Morrison A field guide to
tracks and traces of Australian animals 154 Ringtails build large breeding nests
called dreys in trees.
1994 Northern Herald 15 Sep 23 'It's
not an empty bird's nest, it's actually what we call a drey and that's where
they live.'
2001 Peter Menkhorst and Frank Knight A
Field Guide to the Mammals of Australia 96 [I]n s. of range shelters in large
spherical drey constructed of shredded bark, leaves and twigs in dense
shrubbery[.]
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND. Local application of the term for the
nest of a squirrel. Although the structures are essentially similar in
construction and use, this is merely the result convergent adaptation to
similar conditions – squirrels are placental rodents, and possums are
marsupials. Ringtails also commonly nest in tree hollows lined with leaves.
Presumably citational evidence dating back some decades should be able to be
found.
drug-fucked adj. severely affected by drugs.
1996 Captial Q Weekly (Sydney) 29 Mar
11/1 Three hundred drug-fucked and horny gay men, 200 of them visiting Americans,
are invading Club Med[.]
1996 Captial Q Weekly (Sydney) 21 Jun
9/3 If you're really drunk or drug-fucked, this is all going to be a very
expensive blur.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
drum, run a phr. (of a racehorse) to run a winning race,
as tipped or expected.
1933 Raymond Spargo Betting Systems
Analysed 44 'Wot did I tell yer! Wasn't it a put up job the last time? Couldn't
run a drum in a field o' goats an' now 'e licks class company!'
Notes: Predating AND 1942.
duck's guts n. something superlative.
1994 Senate Hansard 9 Nov Senator
Ellison: This is the ducks guts, as we term it in Western Australia.
2000 June Factor Kidspeak 65 This new
gadget's just the duck's guts.
2002 Larry's Aussie Slang and Phrase
Dictionary (www.angelescity.com/aussie_slang.html) the Ducks guts - some things
really great (don't ask me why).
2004 Uteman website
(www.uteman.com.au) Anyone interested joining a ute club with a base in
Deniliquin.Im thinking about starting one . No yank stuff as stickers or names
has to be true blue on the uterus. 'Ducks Guts Ute Club'.
2004 oral citation 23 May 'So this is
s'pose to be the duck's guts, is it?'
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND. Aussie version of the ant's pants, cat's
pyjamas, etc.
duds n. trousers or pants.
1924 Gilbert H. Lawson A Dictionary
of Australian Words and Terms 11 duds
– Trousers.
1973 Ribald (Sydney) #45 2 'I
succeeded in wriggling out of me duds and took off my T-shirt.'
1977 Jim Ramsay Cop It Sweet 33 duds: Trousers.
1981 David Foster Moonlight xviii. 168 By one
they are sitting on the coach wearing cabbage tree hats, crimean shirts,
moleskin duds, leather belts and blucher boots.
1992 'Roy Slaven' (John Doyle) Five
South Coast Seasons 27 'The bloke was sitting in the driver's seat when I
got back, duds around the ankles and clearly on the tool – bold as brass.'
Notes: a restriction of sense that appears only in Australia (according
to other historical dictionaries at least). Hence as a verb: to pull down
someone's pants as a prank; to pants.
1992 'Roy Slaven' (John Doyle) Five
South Coast Seasons 64 'So, thinking he was just shy, I thought I'd help
him out and dudsed him and linked him up to the train, so to speak.'
dumpty n. a toilet or dunny.
1945 Norman Lindsay The Cousin from
Fiji i. 14 'I will say Grandma's pretty good sport, locking herself in
dumpties and blurting out all that hot stuff at dinner.'
Notes: Predating AND 1965 (incidentally, also from Norman Lindsay).
dry as a ... phr. of land, arid; of a person, parched.
1946 Kylie Tennant Lost Haven xiv. 218 With a
tremendous clattering and roaring they got under way again, and climbing
mightily down man-holes and peering about in her midriff, Alec shouted that the
"old lady" [the engine of a punt] was as dry "as a stripped cow."
1953 Nourma Handford Carcoola
Holiday iii. 42 The pastures, he said, between here and Princess Creek, were
over six feet high and as dry as a westerly.
1955 Mary Durack Keep Him My Country
269
'We better shift them cattle, Stan. She's as dry as a bird's arse[.]'
1966 Sidney J. Baker The Australian
Language (2nd ed.) iv. 90 dry as a bird's arse, extremely dry.
ibid. dry as a sunstruck bone, utterly parched.
1968 Barry Humphries The Wonderful
World of Barry Mackenzie [71] 'It's just that Mitgi's got more amber fluid than
she can use and few of me mates who come from the better class of Australian
home are as dry as the proverbial nun's nasty, as they say in the classics!!'
1971 Barry Humphries Bazza Pulls It
Off
[1] 'Oh Kevie, mein liebling – vot about ein swift frostie for your little
disciple? I'm as dry as a nun's nazi!'
ibid. [glossary] kookaburra's
khyber, as dry as a. A condition of the throat prior to the ingurgitation
of ice cold lager
1972 Bruce Beresford and Barry
Humphries The Adventures of Barry McKenzie [film] 'I really
needed that, I was as dry as a dead dingo's donger.'
1983 Nadia Wheatley Five Times Dizzy
60
Mureka's throat felt lumpy and buring but all the bubblers in the park were as
dry as the Simpson Desert.
1986 [Richard Beckett] The Dinkum
Aussie Dictionary 22 Dry as an old lady's talcum powder: The feminist
version of an offensive phrase used by males, i.e., 'dry as a nun's nasty'. The
bisexual phrase is 'dry as a dead dingo's donger'. All three expressions mean
that the person in question is in desperate need of an alcoholic drink.
1986 Bill Hornadge The Australian
Slanguage (2nd ed.) 79 dry as a Pommy's towel.
ibid. 86 Me mouth is as dry as the
bottom of a birdcage.
1987 Kathy Lette Girls' Night Out (1995) 120 It's as
dry, as he would say, as a Pommy's bath towel.
1989 Sydney Morning Herald 2 Oct (Guide) 9s
What is surprising is that not once in this half hour does Lisa utter words
such as 'strewth' or 'bonza' or 'I'm as dry as a dead dingo's donger'.
1991 Tim Winton Cloudstreet 34 The room
soaked her up and the summer heat worked on her body until its surface was as
hard and dry as the crust of a pavlova.
1992 Rod Marsh Two For The Road 31 For a start
there's the No. 1 man, the doyen, Richie Benaud. He's got a sense humour about
as dry as the throat of a man lost in the Great Sandy Desert for a fortnight.
1994 Sydney Morning Herald 15 Feb 3 A member
of the editorial board of the Macquarie Dictionary, Mr David Blair, said that
there would be no apology and no removal of the phrases. The offending phrases
included 'Dry as a Nun's c---' and 'Dry as a Nun's nasty', and 'Cold as a nun's
tits'.
1994 Telegraph Mirror 16 Feb 11 Perhaps
the final word belongs to Australian actor and author Barry Humphries, who
admitted yesterday to inventing the phrase 'dry as a nun's nasty' for use in
the cartoon strip.
Notes: None of these appear in AND. Wilkes records the Pommy's
towel/bathmat version from 1981, 1982, 1983. Championed and partially popularised by
Barry Humphries. The Tim Winton and Rod Marsh offerings are merely literary and
do not exist as independent colloquialisms.
eat, so hungry I could eat ... phr. jokey, hyperbolic, colloquial
expressions of hunger.
1948 Joseph Furphy The Buln-Buln and
the Brolga [Project Gutenberg] "I spoke up. 'Yes,' says I; 'and at the present
moment he could eat a horse, and chase the rider for his life!'"
1972 Frank Hardy Legends From
Benson's Valley 160 'Are you hungry?' 'I could eat a maggoty horse, so
long as there was sauce on it.'
1982 Nancy Keesing Lily on the
Dustbin 118-9 Threatened with such unappetising dishes it is an advantage to be
so hungry that. 'I could eat a hollow log full of green ants' (a distinctively
northern New South Wales or Queensland expression), or 'I could eat a horse and
chase the rider.' 'I could eat the bum out of an elephant' 'I could eat a
baby's bottom through a cane chair.'
1985 'Sir Les Patterson' The
Traveller's Tool (1986) xii. 79 I've been suddenly that hungry I could
eat a baby's bum through a cane chair.
ibid. 78 I could eat the crutch off a
low-flying emu.
1993 Hugh Lunn Fred & Olive's
Blessed Lino 106 After everyone started the day well with Kinkara tea from Olive's
best cups on the front verandah, Uncle Les arrived saying: 'I'm so hungry I
could eat a horse and chase the rider.'
Notes: These phrases not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
emma – see entry for imma.
euchre v.t. to destroy or ruin; to trounce.
1914 'Lance Corporal Cobber' The
Anzac Pilgrim's Progress 14 It's Kaiser Bill that's called the tune – he's
sworn to euchre John / By sittin' on the Empire that the sun can't set upon.
1983 T.A.G. Hungerford Stories From
Suburban Road 66 The hole you blew the yolk and the white out of had to be as small as
possible, and the bigger it was the less the egg was worth to you, or as a
swap. Sometimes you blew the whole end out of an egg, and that euchred it, of
course.
Notes: Predating and postdating AND 1974. Such an early date is not
unreasonable since the adjectival form euchred 'finished,
exhausted, fucked' has been dated back to the 1930s.
eyedrop n. a game played with marbles (see
citations).
1933 Norman Lindsay Saturdee (1977) iii. 41
Enraged at this proposal to fub off such stuff on honorable milkies, Waldo
snatched them up and threw them out of the ring; for which act of valuation
Bulljo downed on Waldo's bag, picked out his largest French agate and threw it
in the pond. It was done; a crime of the first magnitude. Waldo could not
believe his eyes; this flight of a treasure plomp into the centre of the pond.
His eyedrop taw, his most priceless possession, gone, gone for ever!
1945 Sidney J. Baker The Australian
Language 204 Games played include any-every, big ring, littlering, follow on,
eyesie and eyedrop.
1954 in The Australian Children's
Folklore Newsletter #22 21/2 EYE DROP ... Draw a ring with marbles in it;
drop one marble from eye-height to hit one marble out of the ring.
1992 The Australian Children's
Folklore Newsletter #22 11/1 Marbles in season, which came with mysterious
regularity and then died away – three games only at Caboolture – 'Ring',
'Holes' and 'Eyedrop'.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND. In the Lindsay citation it is presumed
that the 'eyedrop taw' is the one used for playing eyedrop.
fair go n. a fair contest in fighting.
1934 Norman Lindsay The Cautious
Amorist 177 'Your temper's up and now you're talkin',' approved Pat. 'What the
pair of you needs is a fair go face to face will ease your hearts an'
feelin's.'
1942 Gavin Casey It's Harder for
Girls 169 The chaps in the bar were all yelling out advice, and they all
reckoned that if Winch was a man he'd put the pots down and have a fair go.
1961 Frank Hardy The Hard Way 106 Old Sid ran to
his car and came back brandishing the cranking handle. Suddenly, the knot of
people broke up and scuttled into groups. 'I'll kill the commo bastard,' one of
Healy's men shouted, shoving his way towards me. The young man gently lifted
his girl's hand from his arm, confronted the would-be basher and said: 'Give
him a fair go.' Healy's man threw a punch, the young worker dodged and crashed
his fist into his face with a dull crunch.
Notes: Postdating AND 1927. The AND defines this as 'an equitable
contest', but I don't think this captures the sense entirely as it specifically
refers to fighting.
fanannywhacking n. cheating in various children's games,
especially marbles (see citations). Hence, fanannywhacker, a person who
cheats.
1974 Phillip Adams The Unspeakable
Adams 50 Fannany-wacking: Cribbing at alleys.
1977 Jim Ramsay Cop It Sweet 40 fanannywhacker: A marble.
1982 The Australian Children's
Folklore Newsletter #3 4/1 Children would crouch down to make sure there
was no 'fenannywackin' as 'cheating' was called[.]
1985 Cathy Hope Themes from the
Playground 3 Our rules included no 'fananny wacking', fudging or cribbing. Fananny
wacking is pushing your hand forward as you fire. You have to keep your hand
still.
2004 Australian Word Map (www.abc.net.au/wordmap)
[T]he marble (or 'alley') should be propelled from the stationary fist by a
flick of the thumb – fanannywhacking is when the player moves the whole forearm
to gain advantage. (Spelling uncertain) (Used at Hartwell State School in the
early 1960s): I saw that! You're a fanannywhacker!
ibid. Fanannywhacking was definitely
moving the hand while firing, i.e. half-throwing. Cribbing by moving forwards
from where the marble should have been was called 'finagling' – Melb. eastern
suburbs, 1960s.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND. The 1977 citation could be a poor
definition based on a misunderstanding. The highly variable spelling is a result
of it being a spoken rather than written word.
fan-tan n. a gambling game.
1951 Dal Stivens Jimmy Brockett 75 It started when
we run into a mob of Chinks coming out of a fan-tan joint.
1956 Vince Kelly The Bogeyman xi. 147 'Little
tin-pot games of fan-tan and tuen-gow. Not a fine higher than a quid with two
bob costs.'
1988 Peter Carey Oscar and Lucinda 298 The second
room was where fan-tan was played.
Notes: Postdating AND 1937.
feral n. a New Age, hippie, environmentalist.
1995 Sun-Herald 1 Jan 3 To the
ferals, who travel up and down Australia's east coast looking for logging
protests to attend, the Federal Government's decision is appalling.
ibid. However, Sophie Whan, 23, and
mother of one-year-old Obe, cautioned that such a practice was against the
principles of the ferals, or 'forest dwellers', as they prefer to be called.
1996 Underground Surf Aut 62/1 The full
ferals and mullheads tend to hang up the bluff more.
1998 Sydney Morning Herald 4 Apr Spectrum 7s
Also dubbed Ferals or Travellers, Crusties tend to have no fixed address, which
can be a problem at dole time. Crystals hang from their Kombis' rear-view
mirrors, and their clothes are usually torn.
1998 Sun-Herald 21 Jun 17 Sharing
a house are 'clubber' Mark McKenna, 22, 'Goth' Steven Haynes, 19, and 'doof
feral' Leiziah Restall, 21.
ibid. Doofs are another term for
dance-club ravers, goths dress like members of the Addams Family and crusties
are also known as ferals, or New Age hippies.
1998 The Big Issue 7 Sep 6/2 These
parties attracted the Ferals, who live a basic existence on the edge of
society.
1998 Shane Maloney Nice Try 129 We still had
our rough edges, our greatcoated winos and barefoot ferals, our ferret-faced
teenage mothers and lingerie lunches, our dumb-fuck rev-heads and back-lane
chop shops.
Notes: A new Australianism.
field v.i. to work as a bookmaker.
1960 Maurice Cavanough and Meurig
Davies Cup Day xxviii. 147 He had very little time to celebrate
Comedy King's success for within a few minutes he was fielding on the next race.
1966 James Holledge The Great
Australian Gamble viii. 81 The suspension was then lifted and Barney
Allen was able to don his satchel again and field on the famous courses in
Sydney and Melbourne.
1975 Frank Hardy and Athol George
Mulley The Needy and the Greedy 37 Grafter Kingsley was fielding at
Boolaroo races. His bank was light and when the first three favourites won, he
went broke.
1982 Joe Andersen Winners Can Laugh vi. 70 He was a
registered AJC bookmaker who regularly fielded at the ARC meetings when the
mood took him[.]
1988 Clive Galea Slipper viii. 64 Time
seems to have passed Kembla by but at least in the fifties and early sixties
the betting ring was very strong with four or five rails bookies from Randwick
fielding at each meeting.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
field v.t. to make a book at (a racecourse or meeting).
1981 Gerald Sweeney The Plunge xii. 311 Next
Spring, he was bound and determined, his turnover figures, his showy
risk-taking, and his exposure in te media, would all combine to see him at
Flemington – fielding his first Melbourne Cup on the rails.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
fifty n. half old, half new beer
1965 John O'Grady Aussie English 16 In which case,
ask for a 'middy of fifty'.
Notes: Predating AND 1971.
fillum n. a film or movie.
1912 Bulletin 4 Apr 14/4
[T]alkin' big, and talkin' fast, and poet-like, and free, / About the noble
fillums wot was inside to see!
1932 C.J. Dennis in the The C.J.
Dennis Collection 109 i thort ole bills eyes wud drop out of is ed tork
about them merikin gangster fillums they was sunday skool picknick cumpared to
them 2 blud thursty oprers we seen
1965 D.E. Charlwood All The Green
Year (1975) 101 You know – the fillum star, the one in Sins of the Fathers.
1967 Sue Rhodes Now you'll think I'm
awful (1968) 71 'Saw a beaut fillum the other day.'
1985 'Sir Les Patterson' (Barry
Humphries) The Traveller's Tool (1986) iii. 19 Unfortunately, thanks to a
few snooping accountants and the odd ten million dollar Oz epic that was so
shithouse it never copped a release, the arse has dropped out of the Australian
fillum industry.
1992 Picture (Sydney) 5 Feb
55/3 Heroine fwooar-a-minute hornbag crutch-rubbing Madonna's landed a new
fillum role.
Notes: Not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND. Representing a common
Australian (mis)pronunciation, generally used jocularly. The earliest citation
here appeared in AND under the headword spruik.
filth adj. excellent, terrific, wonderful.
1987 Tracks (Sydney) Dec 5/1
Ya mag is filth!
1994 Crank (Sydney) Sum 36
With they're [sic] soon to be released filth album an upcoming
Australian "Big Day Out" tour.
1995 Australian 16 Mar 12 The
trend among surfers until recently was to turn the dichotomy around. 'Filth'
(pronounced fiwf), then, applied to anything good, as did 'goin' off (like
prawns in the hot sun)'.
1996 Tracks (Sydney) Jun 12/1
It's filth to see Nick Wood and Occy making a comeback.
1996 Sydney Morning Herald 26 Aug Agenda 10
After a particularly good wave, they'll say 'filth' (pronounced fiwf), or they
might describe themselves as being 'stoked'.
1998 Underground Surf Crossover (Sydney) #2 35
You could say – mmm, awesome, faaark! Stoked, too good, unreal, buuullshit, or
filth, mate!
ibid. 48 Nick was doing backside snaps
and getting a few cool pits and it was young Sammy who got a filth no-hand
backside pit.
Notes: A new Australianism, modelled on the US wicked and sick, both of which
became popular here in the 1980s.
filthy1 adj. excellent, terrific, wonderful;
magnificent.
1987 Tracks (Sydney) Dec 5/1
Quote of the month goes to Vic Hislop for the description of the filthy noah he
caught: "It's like a couple of bull stuck together." Awesome.
1987 Kathy Lette Girls' Night Out (1995) 188
'Filthy waves,' agreed Bodge. 'Classic.'
1989 Sydney Morning Herald 30 Jun 3 'Filthy'
doesn't mean 'disgustingly dirty' anymore. It means great or excellent, as in
'that's a really filthy surfboard', or it was a really 'filthy day'.
1994 Crank (Sydney) Sum 22/3
Where are the filthiest chicks in the world?
1996 Tracks (Sydney) Jun 9/1
Anyway the crew of Surfrider Foundation put on a filthy day with lots of live
music and a BBQ.
1998 Sun-Herald 18 Jan 29 The
talent was filthy, the babes were lush and the mosh pit was going off.
Notes: A new Australianism, modelled on the US wicked and sick, both of which
became popular here in the 1980s.
filthy2 adj. upset, enraged. Thus, filthy on, upset with.
1992 Robert G. Barrett Davo's Little
Something 98 He realised that even though he was filthy on the world and screaming
inside he was going to have to be a little more polite to people as time went
by[.]
1995 Fatty Vautin Turn It Up! 58 Don't they get
disappointed and filthy?
1995 Crackers Keenan Australia's
Funniest Racing Yarns xvi. 105 Mick was filthy and served up to him in
retaliation and they had a fist fight in the jockeys' room afterwards.
1997 Australian Financial Review 15-16 Nov Weekend
9 We have dirty on, but not filthy on.
Notes: A variant of the usual dirty. both of which probably owe their
origin to the earlier collocations dirty look and filthy look. Although I have
only collected citations from the 1990s, I am sure it is much older – I seem to
recollect it from the 1970s.
fisho n. a fisherman or fisherwoman.
1971 Frank Hardy The Outcasts of
Foolgarah 241 Hardy took as his text an unfinished poem, not perhaps entirely
original but most apposite, which he understood had been written by the Manly
poet, Scoopydoop Wilson, the oracle of the Fisho's Club.
1982 Bob Staines What a Whopper 45 The fishos were
told their tackle would be returned to them at their local police station on
the payment of a small fine.
Notes: Not recorded in Wilkes, AND.
flatette n. a small flat.
1943 Dominic Healy A Voyage to Venus 23
Notes: Predating AND who cite Baker 1945 (but it was in Baker 1943 as
well). See note at boofhead. Unfortunately I have misplaced the text
of the citation – a trip to the National Library is needed.
flick pass, get/give the phr. to get/give the sack
1987 Kathy Lette Girls' Night Out 27 Anyway, the
bloke who got the low scores made sure we got the flick pass.
1988 Clive Galea Slipper! xxii. 155 'I could see only big trouble
for myself if I didn't give them the flick pass.'
Notes: From rhyming slang, flick pass = arse (the sack).
Recorded in AND from 1983 as a figurative use of flick pass, but without
explanation as to meaning. This is now commonly known in the curtailed form give
the flick = to dismiss, reject, get rid of. Here are some additional citations.
1982 National Times 3 Oct 45 He left
school at 16, lasted eight months as a fitter and turner, but then 'I give it
the flick – the boss was an arsehole.'
1988 Sunday Mail (Brisbane) 5 June
TV guide 2 Benny Hill fans benefit on Tuesday on TVO when L.A. Law is given the flick
for one week only[.]
1988 Sunday Telegraph 4 Dec TV guide 13
The year is 2274 and life in glassdomed city is a perpetual piece of cake for
its hedonists. But the fun wheel stops dead on 30, the age for compulsory
'renewal' that, in reality, means the flick.
1990 The Australian Children's
Folklore Newsletter #18 11/2 I don't know, you get invited out to duinner
on consecutive Sunday nights and return to the radio to find that 'Games we
played as kids' has been 'given the flick'.
Notes: Also used as a verb = to dismiss, reject, get rid of. Note that
this is quite uncommon.
1988 Clive Galea Slipper! xiii. 93 There
had always been plenty of women at the club who fancied him, but he had
politely turned them away until lately. Now Joe seemed less keen to flick them.
He'd even taken a few out to dinner[.]
floater n. (in two-up) a penny that doesn't spin.
1941 Baker
Notes: Predating AND 1944. See note at boofhead.
fnudge v.i. to cheat at playing marbles. Also, phernudge. Hence, fnudger, one who cheats.
1974 Phillip Adams The Unspeakable
Adams 50 A fnudger: A poor stylist at alleys.
1977 Jim Ramsay Cop It Sweet 40 funudger: A marble.
2004 Australian Word Map (www.abc.net.au/wordmap)
phernudge: to overstep the mark when shooting at a children's game of marbles;
to creep up over the agreed mark from where you play a shot: I saw you
phernudge! We said no phernudging!
ibid. [Melbourne informant] I used to
use this term a lot when playing marble games. Anyone caught cheating was
Phernudging.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND. Probably an alteration of fudge (see below). The
1977 citation could be a poor definition based on a misunderstanding (see entry
for fanannywhacking, where the same error seems to occur in the same
source).
form n. luck.
1957 Ray Lawler Summer of the
Seventeenth Doll I.ii. 33 'Yeah. That's just about my form, ain't it?'
1962 John Wynnum Tar Dust vi. 77 'This same
bird started pumpin' Toggle and me about getting something on the cheap. How'd
you like their rotten form, eh?'
1964 John Wynnum Jiggin' in the
Riggin' iii. 36 'What's the chance of picking up a cab this time of day?'
'Knowing my form, not so hot.'
1966 Ray Slattery Mobbs' Mob vi. 121 'How's his
flamin' form!'
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND. Baker 1966, records the expression rotten
form, but doesn't seem to have noticed that form can be used
independently of this collocation. An extension of horseracing parlance where form refers to a
racehorse's track record.
fuck knuckle n. a contemptible person; a 'wanker'.
1981 Angelo Loukakis For the
Patriarch xv. 155 'You stay outa this fucknuckle!' – he turned on Mawbey who
looked as if he was having a heart attack.
1997 Sick Puppy Comix (Sydney) #6 5 'It's
been such a long time since I've been to the beach, I've forgotten what an
oily, muscle-headed, fuck-knuckle looks like.'
1997 Rants (Sydney) Oct 41 'Come on dickhead, get that shit out
of there! Today, fuck knuckle!'
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
fuck truck n. a panel van used
for sexual encounters.
1974 Guy (Sydney) 21 Apr
16/4 Sydney: Guy 22 bi, 8" with surf fuck truk [sic.] wants singles,
couples for weekend trips up coast or quickies, enjoys adultery.
Notes: Predating AND 1979.
fuckwitted adj. idiotic.
1971 Jack Hibberd A Stretch of the
Imagination 40 'You two-timing, fuck-witted mongrel of a slut! Open up or I'll
stuff you with a fist full of broken glass!'
Notes: Predating AND 1973.
fudge v.i. to cheat by encroaching over the line when shooting in
marbles. Also, as a noun, such a shot. Hence, the verbal noun, fudging.
[1924 Gilbert H. Lawson A Dictionary
of Australian Words and Terms 13 fudge
– To cheat.]
1945 in Sidney J. Baker Australia
Speaks (1953) 109 In his well-known child book, "Smiley" (1945), M. Raymond
has made a highly-entrertaining study of the Australian juvenile[.] Although
some of the following terms belong to the general pool of Australianisms, here
are sundry experssions which "Smiley" and his associates use: big ring, tor,
stonks, glassy, chow, fudging, dubs (all of which are, of course, essential
items in the vocabulary of any accomplished player of marbles)[.]
1970 J.S. Gunn in English
Transported 60 As an example, the game of marbles has given knuckledown, fudging, and the cry of mully
grubs to general usage, quite apart from its special references to stinkies,
kellies, tors, and connies.
1976 David Ireland The Glass Canoe 103 'Stop
fudging!'
ibid. 'Fudge! No fudges.' 'Knuckle
down! Look! No fudges.'
1980 Clive James Unreliable Memoirs (1981) 34 The
basic rule of marbles is that the taw must be fired from outside the ring. If
the firing hand creeps inside the ring before the moment of release, it's a
fudge. Mears fudged more blatantly than his helpless opponents would have
believed possible.
1985 Cathy Hope Themes from the
Playground 3 Our rules included no 'fananny wacking', fudging or cribbing. Fananny
wacking is pushing your hand forward as you fire. You have to keep your hand
still. You weren't allowed to 'crib' over the line.
1993 Hugh Lunn Fred & Olive's
Blessed Lino 24 Jim didn't even have a marble bag, and I felt sorry for him because
he was too busy learning ordinary English to ever know all the words you needed
for marbles - like having a favourite tor, or fudging, or poison ring, or what
a blood alley was.
2004 Australian Word Map (www.abc.net.au/wordmap)
In Tassie, you fudged it, got caught fudging or cheating - although associated
with playing marbles, also used in other areas, e.g. fudging an exam i.e.
cheating in an examination.
ibid. I played marbles in the Southern
Riverina in the 1940s and 1950s. We called it 'Fernannick', but knew it as
'fudge' and 'crib' also.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
fully adv. used as an intensifier.
1994 Crank (Sydney) Sum 4 We
want to go tomorrow morning, so yeah, fully.
ibid. 43/2 The end bit on Slater fully
reminds you that he is the leader of the pack at the moment, I won't even try
to explain it, you need to see it.
1996 Linda Jaivin Rock n Roll Babes
from Outer Space 115 'I like the music,' she commented amiably. 'Yeah?'
said Jake, inexplicably proud, as though he'd had something to do with it.
'Fully. That's why we're here.'
2004 SBS website (www.sbs.com.au/pizza/new.php3)
Pizza boys are back with a fully sick, brand new series.
Notes: A new term common amongst adolescents and young adults.
garbage man n. garbage collector.
1940 Eric Curry Hysterical History
of Australia iii. 39 Strange and unbelievable as it may seem, my garbage man appears
to know all about this famous letter.
Notes: Predating AND 1944.
gee-gees n. the horseraces; the turf.
1963 Frank Hardy Legends From
Benson's Valley 18 'You wanted to fight old Murphy – but... And we
done our dough on the gee-gees.'
1966 James Holledge The Great
Australian Gamble xiv. 139 '[He] likes nothing better than a little
flutter on the gee-gees.'
1979 Lance Peters The Dirty Half-Mile (1989) vi. 39 'I
never bet on the gee-gees.'
1988 Peter Carey Oscar and Lucinda 324 It did not
matter that Dancer was a card-player
himself, or that he was not beyond a 'something on the gee-gees'.
1997 John Birmingham The Tasmanian
Babes Fiasco 243 Michael Duffy (who leaves me alone and only calls to send over
cheques, drugs, alcohol, tips on the gee-gees etc)...
Notes: Not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
get amongst phr. to get involved in; to engage in or
partake of enthusiastically.
1951 Dal Stivens Jimmy Brockett 252 'I've got a
girl,' he said, blushing. 'I'm thinking of marrying her.' 'That's good,
brother,' I said. 'But you get amongst it, too, don't you?'
ibid. iii. The workmen walked round the
puffed-up mound, rolled cigarettes and read some of the inscriptions on the
wreaths. 'Jimmy, with love from Helen,' the tall workman read out aloud. 'Bloody
girl friend, I suppose.' 'He got amongst it.' 'Here's one with 'Nan' on it.'
1962 John Wynnum Tar Dust ii. 25 'Let's
wait until a few more of our mob smell out this bin, then we'll get among 'em.'
1969 Alexander Buzo Rooted (1973) 91 'That's
the spirit. Get out there and get amongst it.'
1970 Suzy Jarratt Permissive
Australia viii. 154 Exclusive range of bawdy classics available now! Titles
include 'The Great Farting Contest' – the battle between Lord Windamere of
Britain and Paul Boomer of Australia – and 'Bang Away Lulu.' Get amongst them
while they're hot! Be a riot at your next wing ding!
1982 Bob Staines Wot a Whopper 56 One local
identity decided he would get amongst them and, armed with a very thick line
and live mullet, he heaved it out with all his might.
1990 Sam Watson The Kadaitcha Sung 196 I'm going to
get amongst them gumbey in there. I got to get a scrape soon, Boy.
1992 Tracks (Sydney) Oct. 137
Apart from that, quite a few Queenslanders have been doing the traditional winter
bolt to Indo to get amongst some tropical juice.
1996 Australian Snowbaording News Apr 6/2 Get
amongst 'em Quinnos.
Notes: Not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND. Rarely in the past tense.
gin around v.i. to muck about.
1979 Sam Weller Old Bastards I Have
Met
36 For instance, if some old bomb shack is in the road of progress, stick the
dozer in. But if anyone starts ginning around with that little chruch just off
King George Square in Brisbane, I'll fight.
1982 Nancy Keesing Lily on the Dustbin
149
In the 1950s a Thursday Island grandmother of
Sri Lankan/Anglo-Saxon descent, who was born at about the turn of the century,
had some unusual expressions. To someone 'flapping around' or over-reacting:
'Stop ginning around!' 'You're like a gin in bloomers!'; 'You're carrying on
like a gin at a christening!'
2001 James and Robert's personal
website (www.jamesandrobert.com) At last, after months of ginning around my
secondment to London came through.
2004 Track T'van website
(www.carsandcaravans.com.au) From the time, I climbed out of the four wheeler
to the time we had the unit fully erected and were ready to hit the hay was
less than six minutes! That included, as you'd expect, a bit of ginning around
trying to find the right internal pole and figuring out how things were undone
or done-up.
Notes: Not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND. Based on the typical racial
slur that Aboriginal women are inveterate time wasters.
glassie n. a glass playing marble.
1927 The Kid Stakes (film) 'Get
Hector out about six o'clock in the mornin' and I'll give you a glassy and six
stinkies after the race.'
1933 Norman Lindsay Saturdee (1977) xii. 124
'Give yer a game of alleys, glassies up,' challenged Pigeon.
1945 Sidney J. Baker The Australian
Language 204 Marbles of one kind or another are known to Australian children as bottleys,
bottle-ohs, cornies, cornelians, chows, dakes, doblars, conks, commos,
stinkies, stonkers, dibs, peewees, glassies, immas and smokies.
1984 David Malouf Harland's Half
Acre iii. 94 [There was] a collection of marbles in a chamois bag from which
he let me choose, every now and then, a glassie or a glazed taw.
1985 Cathy Hope Themes from the
Playground 3 The Glassie was one of the cheapest marbles.
ibid., The ones that came out of
lemonade bottles were known as Glassies too. They weren't highly prized because
you could get a lot of them.
1989 The Australian Children's
Folklore Newsletter #17 7/2 Then there was Glassies from the lemonade
bottles, Agates, Stonks which were made from clay and, rarely in my time,
Tombowlers.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
go v.t. to attack or fight (someone).
1924 Gilbert H. Lawson A Dictionary
of Australian Words and Terms 13 go
him – To want to fight.
1945 Robert S. Close Love Me Sailor 149 I was itching
to go him.
1957 Ray Lawler Summer of the
Seventeenth Doll 24 'Well, that did it. Roo went him and it was on,
cane knives and the lot.'
1972 David Williamson The
Removalists 66 'If you're looking for someone to arrest, then go him.'
Notes: Not recorded in AND.
go v.t. to use or utilise – in the construction go the ....
1944 [in Wilkes/AND – see Notes]
1955 D'Arcy Niland The Shiralee 51 'They reckon he
can go the knuckle, too, but I've never seen him fight.'
ibid. 137 'We're skinned
out. Unless we go the knock on the kitchen table.'
1985 Barry Dickins What the Dickins 42 In they go, and
out they come, and the whole family goes the fang!
1993 The Australian 3 Dec 1 [heading]
Barry goes the biff on CD books.
1996 Tracks (Sydney) 43 Some
things are the same at surf contests the world over: the chicks do aerobics ...
And the blokes go the big optic nerve.
Notes: Both Wilkes and AND record the phrases go the knuckle and go the
grope, but the formula can be used with other nouns.
go v.t. to eat or drink (a specified item).
1949 Jon Cleary The Long Shadow (1968) vi. 45
'Reckon you could go an ice cream?'
1957 'Nino Culotta' (John O'Grady) They're
A Weird Mob (1958) iv. 46 'Yer could go a feed, couldn' yer?'
1993 Tim Winton Lockie Leonard: Scumbuster
70
'I could really go a cuppa,' said Lockie.
Notes: Not recorded in Wilkes, AND.
go v.i. to fight.
1962 Criena Rohan The Delinquents 85 'Shit! you're a
mess, kid,' she said. 'You can go. I'll give you that; but you have to spot too
much weight. You're too titchy to blue on.'
1988 Clive Galea Slipper xxii. 151 'You
blokes go all right,' one of them said, 'that was a bloody good fight.'
Notes: Not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
go off v.i. of a racehorse, to make a proper run in a
race after being previously held back to give an impression of poor form in
order to obtain good odds.
1936 Tom Ellis The Science of Turf
Investment iv. 33 Of course, that fact of having a horse whose form has been kept
'under cover' does not mean it is a certainty when it is ready to 'go off.'
Notes: Predating AND 1941 (citing Baker).
go off v.i. to be raided by the authorities.
1956 Vince Kelly The Bogeyman vii. 99 '[T]he
S.P. man and the man or woman who sells a few drinks under the lap are fair
game for the pimp. The one's who don't go off have to pay.'
Notes: Predating AND 1962.
goodoh adj. all right; in good health.
1905 Duke Tritton in John Meredith Learn
To Talk Old Jack Lang 12 I felt goodoh when I came out and dried myself with
the Baden Powell.
Notes: Predating AND 1914.
gook n. a person of South East Asian extraction.
1969 Michael Peters Pommie Bastard viii. 178 We're
going to push those God damn Gooks across the 38th parallel.
1981 Gerald Sweeney The Plunge (1989) xii. 320 [A]
tide of gooks swept down upon him, waving $50 bills and wanting nothing else
but Minuetto.
1995 Christos Tsiolkas Loaded (1998) 142 [T]he
skip sticks with the skip, the wog with the wog, the gook with the gook, and
the abo with the abo.
Notes: Originally US slang from the Korean War, whence it made its way
to Australia with returned servicemen and women. In the US it can be applied to
Indians, Papua New Guineans and Pacific Islanders as well as oriental peoples –
in Australia it only refers to oriental people. A similar restriction of
meaning can be seen below at the entry for wog.
gone to Gowings phr. really gone.
1966 Sidney J. Baker The Australian
Language (2nd ed.) xi. 231 Some localized samples: M.B. or to suffer
from M.B. (the initials represent Melbourne Bitter) and gone to Gowings (Gowing Bros. Ltd.
is the name of a Sydney firm). All mean drunk.
1977 Jim Ramsay Cop It Sweet 40 gone to gowings: pec[uliar to]. Sydney.
Hopelessly beaten or outclassed.
1982 Nancy Keesing Lily on the
Dustbin 118-9 If I say a person is too stupid to know 'whether it is Thursday or
Anthony Horderns', or that, being astray as to wits she has 'gone to Gowings'
my words only have meaning if my auditor understands that these are famous
Sydney shops. Furthermore, 'gone to Gowings' may not have much impact on people
too young to remember a long-continued advertising campaign of which 'gone to
Gowings' was the slogan.
Notes: Colloquial usage of an advertising slogan for a Sydney retail
firm. Essentially just an intensifier for the word gone – in any of its
formal, colloquial or slang senses. Not in AND. There is an entry for this
phrase in Wilkes, but he only adduces two citations, and these actually refer
to the advertising slogan, rather than the colloquial usage. Note that all the
citations here are secondary sources (and there are more to be found) – primary
evidence seems elusive.
gramma n. a type of pumpkin.
1866 Henning Letters 97 Plum-pudding,
roley-puddings made of gramah-jam, beefsteak pies and puddings I am quite clever
at.
1960 Rumsey Seed Catalogue (Sydney) GRAMMA – TROMBONE, thick flesh, special strain for market
2/8 [1 oz.]
Notes: Predating AND 1964.
great outback n. the outback, romanticised.
1930 Frederick J. Thwaites The Broken Melody 56 They
rose, and, with Mr Bryce's hand resting on Cooper's shoulder, they crossed the
busy street. Strange that these two men, both brothers of the great Outback,
both lovers of their country, should be thrown together so.
Notes:
Predating AND 1936.
grog, on the phr. on a drinking binge.
1946 Kylie Tennant Lost Haven iv. 66 He had been
pleased to see her, 'the cows bellering their heads off, as if they'd been on
the grog and got a headache themselves, and me, I could low like that and take
a pleasure in lowing, if it weren't that the roof of me mouth's gone to
blazes.'
Notes: Predating AND 1959.
grog up v.i. to binge drink.
1955 Alan Marshall I Can Jump
Puddles xxiii. 178 "It's the kid who never sees men grogging up who takes to it
when he grows up."
Notes: Predating AND 1956.
grommet n. a young surfer. Also grom, grommie.
1985 Tracks (Sydney) Oct 82
And nothing shits a Hell Crew grommet more than a flashing wow from Coogee in a
fluoro.
1986 Sydney Morning Herald 28 June Good
Weekend 16 For those not fully au fait with surfing language, a grommet
is a young and dangerously keen surfer - often bespattered with freckles, known
to wag school occasionally when the waves are good and regarded by more mature
boardriders as a pestilence.
1992 Tracks (Sydney) Jun 16
She's the kind of girl that every pubescent grom dreams for (and a few adults
we know too!).
1992 Tracks (Sydney) Oct 18
More importantly, by presenting a safe image, the groms are helping to show the
straights and old fogies who are down on surfing that it is populated by
sharp-thinking athletes.
1993 Tim Winton Lockie Leonard:
Scumbuster 106 'I hear she's a hot grommet. Better than you, maybe.'
1996 Underground Surf Aut 18 An army of
gremlins fronted – the crew signed on and the groms bailed – the beers flowed
and the rest is shoptalk.
ibid. 22 It's a simplistic question and
puerile in the extreme, but that's the way grommies think and that's also the
way I like to answer them.
1996 Tracks (Sydney) Jun 29/1
Nothing unlike when you're a grommet getting poled!
1997 Tim Winton Lockie Leonard:
Legend 4 Because, you see, as any grommet knows, there are fins and there are
FINS!
1998 Sun-Herald 25 Oct
SundayLife! 32 Spring may bring with it the grommets, the Brits and the goat
boats, but then, there's always a wave, somewhere.
1998 Underground Surf Crossover (Sydney) #2 48
He's a hot grommie who has all the moves and a sick style.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
gum tree n. a eucalyptus tree.
1770 James Cook, Journal 1768--71 viii. Here are
but few sorts of Trees besides the Gum tree, which is the most numerous, and is
the same that we found on the Southern Part of the Coast, only here they do not
grow near so large.
ibid. The Woods do not
produce any great variety of Trees; there are only 2 or 3 sorts that can be
called Timber. The largest is the gum Tree, which grows all over the country;
the wood of this Tree is too hard and ponderous for most common uses.
Notes: Predating AND 1789.
gunna phr. going to.
1944 Lawson Glassop We Were The Rats
II.
xix. 106 'mick,' he said, 'I'm gunna be a father.'
Notes: Predating AND 1950.
hambone n. a male striptease act.
1964 Martin Sharp in Oz Feb [A]nd then
Phil did this king hambone on the kitchen table and ran round the house in the
raw ripping the gear off all the birds[.]
Notes: Predating AND 1966.
hammer n. heroin.
1986 Frank Hardy Hardy's People 105 They just
seem to think that they are just ordinary people silling hammer (as they call
heroin).
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
handbag n. a woman's male escort to a social engagement.
1967 Sue Rhodes Now you'll think I'm
awful 70 And every true bitch knows the value to her social standing, of the
type of men best described as 'handbags'. They're lovely to look at,
beautifully dressed and totally brainless.
1968 Sue Rhodes And when she was bad
she was popular i. 15 I didn't really want him, but he made a nice handbag and the fact
that she couldn't get a look-in nearly drove her mad.
1984 Kathy Lette Girls' Night Out 181 'You're
training me to become a human handbag that you can take on your arm to
premi?res and dinner parties.'
1996 Sydney Morning Herald 22 Jun 17/1 Like
the time she described James Packer as a 'handbag', something that apparently
made him unhappy.
Notes: Predating Wilkes citations from the 1980s, which however cover
various other senses. The 1984 quote doesn't seem fully lexicalised.
Happy Jack n. a babbler (bird)
1979 Sam Weller Old Bastards I Have
Met
14 All her mates were fluttering around her and clucking around like a flock of
'Happy Jacks' and Terry raced to the phone and rang the Ambulance.
Notes: Postdating AND 1961.
hard case n. a strong-willed and individual person; an
eccentric and amusing person; a character
1877 J.S. James The Vagabond Papers (2nd series) 92
There was one 'hard case', however, a man who had been continually drinking,
who was deaf to advice given to him to take the pledge.
Notes: Predating AND 1892.
hop in for your chop phr. to take your fair share.
1954 Eric Lambert The Veterans i. 16 'Hop in for
your chop. Make 'em give you everything you're entitled to.'
Notes: Predating AND 1968.
hoppo-bumpo n. a children's game (see citations).
Hence, as a verb, hoppo-bump.
1974 Phillip Adams The Unspeakable
Adams 51 Hoppo-Bumpo: A game played by hopping around on one leg, using folded
arms as bumper bars.
1983 The Australian Children's
Folklore Newsletter #4 4/1 Many of the games had
delightful names. There was one called
'hoppo-bumpo', naturally enough a combination of hops and bumps[.]
1989 'Dame Edna Everage'
My Gorgeous Life 80 We saw the barefoot urchins playing knuckles and
hoppo-bumpo on the scarred bitumen roadway[.]
1998 Shame Maloney Nice Try 263 The boys were
hoppo-bumping each other, acting the goat, while the girls maintained an air of
superior indifference.
1998 Sydney Morning Herald 7 Feb 38 The hoppo
bumpo that has characterised this week has served the purpose of sifting the
main points of view, which will now be further ground down in the back rooms by
the members of the resolutions committee.
1998 Life. Be In It. Games Manual 17 Hoppo Bumpo.
Description: Each participant stands on one leg, holding the other foot in
his/her hand. On the signal to start, participants balancing on one leg hop
about trying to knock other participants off balance.
2004 Australian Word Map (www.abc.net.au/wordmap)
[It is a] game hopping on one leg & attempting to knock over other players
– last man standing wins: Let's play hoppo bumpo.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND. According to Australian Word Map informants, this
term dates back as far as the 1940s, and seems to have been more common in
Victoria. The second 1998 citation shows a figurative use.
hornbag n. a sexually attractive person.
1981 Barry Humphries A Nice Night's
Entertainment 189 Of course I love you, horn-bag. Just get up here, pronto, or I'll
start without ya.
1992 Picture (Sydney) 5 Feb
55/3 Heroine fwooar-a-minute hornbag crutch-rubbing Madonna's landed a new
fillum role.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
imma n. a coloured glass playing marble. Also, immo, emma.
1945 Sidney J. Baker The Australian
Language 204 Marbles of one kind or another are known to Australian children as bottleys,
bottle-ohs, cornies, cornelians, chows, dakes, doblars, conks, commos, stinkies,
stonkers, dibs, peewees, glassies, immas and smokies.
1953 Sidney J. Baker Australia Speaks 109 Other, mainly
indigenous, offerings include: imma, dib, stonky, tom bowler and put the moz
on.
1983 The Australian Children's
Folklore Newsletter #4 3/2 Other popular games were 'alleys' – in this we
used 'stonks', 'agates', 'emmas' and 'reels' – and tops.
1985 Cathy Hope Themes from the
Playground 3 An Immo was made to look like a Real but you could tell
because an Immo broke easily and chipped differently. You could buy 5 Immoes
for one penny.
1989 The Australian Children's
Folklore Newsletter #17 7/2 Next came the Imma, obviously immitation real.
Immas looked like Reals but the shrewd boy was never fooled.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND. From imm(itation) + -o or –a. These were
'glass' marbles that looked like genuine marbles made from 'agate' or 'marble'
– see entry for real below.
improve, on the phr. improving.
1943 Baker
Notes: Predating AND who cite Baker 1959. See note at boofhead.
Indo n. an Indonesian; Indonesia. Also, as an adjective, Indonesian.
1954 Betty Jeffrey White Coolies (1959) xxiii. 137
She dressed herself quickly and went off with it to the Indos in Hut 11.
1966 Baker xvii. 368 Indo, Indonesia(n). This
word was mainly used by Australia's "yellow Press", beginning in 1958, to fit
headings. After a flirtation with it, the Melbourne "Sun-Pictorial"
converted it to Indon.
1978 C.J. Koch The Year of Living
Dangerously ii. 36 'The Indos don't take much notice of me – they think I'm a
local.'
ibid. v. 61 'You never
know who's watching in the Hotel – and the Indo. newspapers are always running
articles on the white men's vice den here.'
1992 Tracks (Sydney) Oct 131
Indo is also in the midst of its off season, but I've been there at the same
time of the year and if you get up early to beat the winds you will still score
excellent waves.
ibid. 19 If you're a veteran Indo
traveller, steeled in the forge of bigger barrels, you probably wouldn't bother
with this wave, although you could slip out for a few turns to break the
boredom.
1996 Tracks (Sydney) Jun 33/3
Of course being Indo the waves are perfect[.]
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND (which gives Indon, much less
common). Note that the 1954 citation contradicts what Baker says about the
word.
Indon n. an Indonesian.
1966 Baker xvii. 368 Indo, Indonesia(n).
This word was mainly used by Australia's 'yellow Press', beginning in 1958, to
fit headings. After a flirtation with it, the Melbourne 'Sun-Pictorial'
converted it to Indon.
Notes: Predating AND 1972. See note at boofhead.
iron lung, wouldn't work in an ~ phr. (someone) is
terribly lazy.
1971 Frank Hardy The Outcasts of
Foolgarah vii. 79 Even the most primitive societies protect, succor and shelter
the aged, but not so the affluent society with the principle of he that cannot
work neither shall he eat (except Silver Tails who wouldn't work in an iron
lung).
1985 'Sir Les Patterson' The Traveller's
Tool vi. 42 Sometimes I work a twenty-four, twenty-five even a twenty-six
hour day, but try telling that to a Pom who wouldn't work in an iron lung!
1991 Sunday Herald Sun (Melb.) 1 May 13
Funny, at that end of the scale, the cry is: 'That lot wouldn't work in an iron
lung. Pass the cognac and organise a recession after lunch, Simpkins. That'll
teach the commo bludgers a lesson.'
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
jackeroo n. a white man living away from settlement.
1840 Lieutenant Gorman to Colonel Secretary
Thomson ADNSW (Ref. 4/2539.21) 30 Mar We found one man belonging to
the Duke of York's Tribe, that appeared to have got a few grains of small shot
about the forehead and chest, and on inquiring from him how he got wounded, he
said the Jackeroos (meaning the Missionaries) had fired on him and others who
were crossing a swamp near their gardens.
Notes: Predating AND 1845. From an unverified citation card of Ted
Hartley's.
jelly blubber n. a jellyfish.
1943 ABC Weekly 1 Mar 22/3 I
listened to little oral essays on jelly blubbers, men-o'-war, sea slugs,
blue-bottles, giant crabs, and even prawns[.]
Notes: Predating AND 1980.
jenny wren n. a female blue wren, or a male blue wren in
non-breeding plumage.
1917 Henry Handel Richardson Australia
Felix vi. 115 But Rogers had married beneath him, and the sight of the pursy
upstart – there were people on the Flat who remembered
her running barefoot and slatternly – sitting there, in satin and feathers,
lording it over his own little Jenny Wren, was more than Mahony could tolerate.
1975 Every Australian Bird
Illustrated 188/1 And although the male in all his blue glory is the most
eye-catching member of the family, his wife and daughters, the Plain Janes or
Jenny wrens, though less glamorously plumaged, have their own quiet appeal.
1975 Malcolm McNaughton Australian
Birdlife Illustrated 50/2 Female Superb Blue Wrens lack the bold pattern
and colour of the male. They are often referred to by the common name of
"Jenny-wren".
Notes: Not recorded as an Australianism so far. The OED records this as
a nursery term for the European wren (Troglodytes troglodytes), a small, brown
bird with no distinction between males and females. In Australia the most
common wrens first observed by colonists would have been certain species of the
family Maluridae. These superficially resembled the European wren, except for
breeding males, which had bright blue plumage and were hence called blue
wrens. The females were distinguished from the males as jenny wrens. Unknown to the
casual observer, male blue wrens are also mostly brown when not in their
breeding plumage. In the field they are only able to be separated from females
by an expert, and so the term jenny wren also gets applied to non-breeding
males. Actually, the two commonest species to which the usage would apply are
the superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) and variegated fairy-wren (M.
lambertii) – though, nearly all female and non-breeding malurids are plain brown
and so could reasonably be called jenny wrens. According to Baker (1945, p.211)
jenny wren is also applied to the white-fronted chat (Ephthianura albifrons), and the CSIRO's
An Index of Australian Bird Names, 1969, also notes its application to the
speckled warbler (Chthonicola sagittata). Neither of these uses seem to be
very common.
Joes n. the willies.
1985 'Sir Les Patterson' The
Traveller's Tool vi. 41 Boy oh boy, that word 'relationship' gives me
the Joes, especially if it is called a 'caring relationship.'
Notes: Postdating AND 1955.
John Hop n. a cop.
1905 Duke Tritton in John Meredith Learn
To Talk Old Jack Lang 15 It is hard to believe that two years ago I was
humpin' the drum with you, spending all my Oscar Asche on mud and
ooze, and two-up, fighting and brawling, stoushing John Hops, getting run in
and spending a few days in the cooler, pinching the squatter's lambs when we
were out of meat, jumping the rattler and acting all round like a pair of half
witted clowns.
Notes: Predating AND 1907.
Johnny Raw n. a 'new chum'.
1827 The Australian 17 Oct I remember
reading in London an impudent fabrication called an account of Van Diemen's
Land, in which that Island was called an earthly Paradise, and a good deal more
of the same stuff, for the base purpose it is believed, of inducing some ten or
a dozen ignorant Johnny Raws in London to pay their passage money to the
author.
Notes: Predating AND 1840. From an unverified citation card of Ted
Hartley's. Page number not given.
journo n. a journalist
1966 Baker xvii. 367 The Journos (a Sydney name
for its Journalists' Club).
Notes: Predating AND 1967. This nickname implies the term 'journo'
existed. See note at boofhead.
kangaroo v.t. to squat above a toilet seat
1941 Baker KANGAROO A S***: To defecate while
sitting on one's haunches.
Notes: Predating AND 1955. See note at boofhead.
knockabout n. a rouseabout.
1865 'Rolf Boldrewood' Shearing in
the Riverina 26 So far is he from participation in the general holiday that he finds
the store thronged with shearers, washers, and 'knock-about men,' who being let
loose, think it would be nice to go and buy something pour passer le temps.
1888 'Rolf Boldrewood' Robbery Under
Arms 93 We'd had a couple of knockabouts to help with the cooking and
stockyard work.
Notes: Predating AND: attributive use 1867, and concrete use 1893.
knuckles n. a children's game (see citation 1990).
1974 Phillip Adams The Unspeakable
Adams 51 Jacks: A game played with meat-knuckle bones. Knuckles: A more
violent game with one's own knuckle bones.
1989 'Dame Edna Everage'
My Gorgeous Life 80 We saw the barefoot urchins playing knuckles and
hoppo-bumpo on the scarred bitumen roadway[.]
1990 The Australian Children's
Folklore Newsletter #18 14/2 Another game I was subjected to with my
brother was called Knuckles. This involved holding out a fist knuckles up and
having my brother hit them with his fist as hard as he could. I was not allowed
to pull my fist back unless he took a swipe. If he just twitched his wrist and
I, in sheer fear, retracted my fist, he was allowed a free swipe.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
kurrajong n. the native tree Brachychiton
populneus.
1797 HRNSW 339 One ropemaker
and one assistant. Making of cordage out of currajong.
Notes: Predating AND 1801. From an unverified citation card of Ted
Hartley's.
lairise v.i. to play the lair.
1945 Baker vi. 119 lair a person who
overdoes his dressing and behaves crudely or ostentatiously, whence lairiness, and lairize or lairize
around, to act as a lair or to show off.
Notes: Predating AND 1953. See note at boofhead.
lamb down v.t. to squander.
1888 Australia's First Century 644 He partakes himself
to a public-house. Arrived there, he hands his cheque to Boniface, and proceeds
to 'lamb down' its amount, and the public-house loafers indulge in the luxury
of a several days 'drunk'.
Notes: Predating AND 1899. From an unverified citation card of Ted
Hartley's.
Leb n. a Lebanese person. Also Lebo, Lebbo.
1994 Helen Barnes The Crypt Orchid i. 15 'Like, I'm
walking down the street the other day, broad daylight and this ugly Leb in a
Monaro starts kerb crawling.'
1996 3-D World (Sydney) 1 Apr
40/1 Now people see this Leb and they wonder what's my stature[.]
2000 June Factor Kidspeak 126 lebo n a Lebanese person,
or more generically any Arabic-speaking person also: leb, lebbo. Used
derogatively by outsiders but may be used proudly by those who identify
themselves as Lebanese.
2003 ABC Online website
(www2b.abc.net.au) What have we got? Lebo's; WOGS; Spicks; Poms...
2003 Woglife website
(www.wog.com.au) I can tell by your name your a Lebbo, and if i was a Lebbo i
would be assamed to have in the Lebbo comunity!
2004 Trance Addict website
(www.tranceaddict.com) man i swear the world must be about 10 yrs behind
australia we called them wogs or lebs (racial slurs for their general
ethnicity) and everything was 'fully sick bro'[.]
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND. Despite the late dates for these terms, they
were in common us in Sydney (which has a large Lebanese community) from the
1970s. When directed at people it is primarily a racial slur, though June
Factor is correct regarding the amelioration of the term within the Lebanese
community – a parallel case with wog (see below).
Leb adj. Lebanese. Also Lebo, Lebbo.
1995 Christos Tsiolkas Loaded (1998) 35 Fucking
Lebo men, my sister spits out.
2003 Woglife website
(www.wog.com.au) I can tell by your name your a Lebbo, and if i was a Lebbo i
would be assamed to have in the Lebbo comunity!
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND. See notes above.
lezzo n. a lesbian.
1941 Baker
Notes: Predating AND 1945 (citing Baker). See note at boofhead.
liquid lunch n. beer for lunch.
1964 Barry Humphries A Nice Night's
Entertainment (1981) 80 We kicked off with a liquid lunch[.]
Notes: Predating AND 1969.
loan, have a ~ of phr. to deceive or tease.
1888 in Stewart and Keesing Old Bush
Songs 80 You'll scarcely live a six-months; if you do, then beggar me! / The
advice of a jackeroo – not long from the old countree – / The squatters here,
'tis very clear, have had the loan of me.
1902 A.B. Paterson Rio Grande and
Other Verses 122 'That's the way to get in, / But I reckon I'd better be quiet, or /
They'll spiflicate me' – / And he chuckled, for he / Had the loan of the circus
proprietor.
Notes: Predating AND 1903.
longa prep. near, by.
1877 H. Head in Stewart and Keesing Australian
Bush Ballads (1955) 104 We saw her no more from that day, / But papa, having tasted a
drop, / Said, 'Long time yet me no pull away, / Me like longa whitefellow
stop.'
Notes: Predating AND 1879.
lurks and perks phr. dodges and perquisites.
[1965 John O'Grady Aussie English 67 If you want
your share of perks, / Learn the ropes, and all the lurks.]
1971 David Ireland The Unknown
Industrial Prisoner 248 Perhaps it was the aches and pains of the flu or
the accumulation of the feeling that because he did his work he missed all the
lurks and perks others enjoyed.
Notes: the AND does not record this rhyming phrase other than in a sole
citation from 1980. It has been in common use since the 1970s.
magsman n. a raconteur.
1924 Gilbert H. Lawson A Dictionary
of Australian Words and Terms MAGSMAN – A talkative person; a deceiver.
Notes: Predating AND 1935. The text of this little pamphlet-sized
dictionary is identical to that used in the much-quoted 1924 list of slang from
the Sydney Truth newspaper, 27th April. The list formed part of a
competition ran by the Direct Hosiery Co. Until now the identity of the author
of this minor, but nonetheless important, piece of Australian lexicography has
gone undiscovered.
marvel n. an impressive person.
1903 Joseph Furphy Such Is Life 98 'Rory, you 're
a marvel,' I remarked with sincerity.
1926 Katherine Susannah Prichard Working
Bullocks 100 'You should see Niel Hansen now he's in training. He's a marvel...be
champion of the State yet.'
1940 Christina Stead The Man Who
Loved Children VI. i. 137 The children lounged or sat and stared at Auntie Jo with
admiration. She was a marvel to be able to tell off a bank manager, a landlord,
and to own two houses of her own.
1946 Kylie Tennant Lost Haven ii. 44 'Now that
you've got this all off your chest about what a
marvel you are, giving me another chance...'
1950 Frank Hardy Power Without Glory
II.
vii. 306 He determined that this was one occasion when he would let opportunity
pass him by; but a man had to admit she was a bloody marvel. She had four kids,
yet she'd stand up beside women ten years younger and without a kid to their
name. How old would she be? Near forty, for a moral! A bloody marvel!
1956 Kylie Tennant The Honey Flow ii. 33 'You know
your dad's a bloody marvel,' Blaze would say, enviously.
1965 Randolph Stow The
Merry-Go-Round in the Sea xi. 153 'You may laugh,' Rick said, 'but I think I'm a
bloody marvel.'
1974 Alvin Purple vi. 79 'Doc,' I
laughed, 'you're a bloody marvel.'
1977 Colleen McCullough The Thorn
Birds 8 'She's a bloody marvel, Meggie,' he murmured, his face nuzzling into
her hair.
1986 [Richard Beckett] The Dinkum
Aussie Dictionary 36 Marvel: As in the statement, 'You're a bloody
marvel; I hope they can breed off you.' A sarcastic remark directed at someone
who has buggered things up.
1992 Robert G. Barrett Davo's Little
Something 55 'You're a bloody marvel,' muttered Davo, getting a bit pissed off at
Eddie's lairising[.]
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
mental n. a tantrum or fit of anger; any kind of
fit.
1979 Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette Puberty
Blues 51 'Hi Deb. What happened?' 'He cracked a mental.'
1983 Kerry Cue Crooks, Chooks and
Bloody Ratbags (1988) x. 193 'Do ya wanna go down to old Doc's and watch him do a
mental?'
1986 Tim Winton That Eye, The Sky II. ix. 83 'Henry
chucked a mental,' I say, 'down by the bridge.' 'It was a fit.' 'Is he an
apoplexic or whateveritis?'
1987 Kathy Lette Girls' Night Out (1995) 84 That's
why she hadn't cared about him toughing her. And why the Chihuahua had chucked
a mental about being called a poofter.
1993 Tim Winton Lockie Leonard:
Scumbuster 79 'Anyway, I'm leaning over having a perv at a Tracks mag when - whoosh
- out comes fifty litres of snot and ocean all over the magazine rack. I had to
buy the surf mag and two Women's Weeklys. The guy chucked a mental.'
Notes: Not recorded in Wilkes, AND.
mia mia n. a temporary shelter (non-Aborig. use)
1932 Leonard Mann Flesh in Armour (1944) vii. 47
Others of the robuster, more energetic, sort, had somehow improvised little
huts and mia mias.
1958 Eve Langley The Pea-Pickers i. 85 Karta
Singh's motley crowd of pickers who had been lying around under bags and
mia-mia's for the past month were coming down through the peas, snatching them
up in thousands.
Notes: Interdating AND 1924 <> 1984
Mickey
Mouse adj. rhyming slang for grouse.
1975 'Bluey' Bush Contractors xxxvii. 373 'This
must be it for sure' Dave said 'Look at it' He picked up a piece of ore.
'Wowie, it's the Mickey Mouse gear, fur coat.'
1977 Jim Ramsey Cop it Sweet!
1981 The Macquarie Dictionary
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
missus n the woman of the house on a rural station.
1889 'Rolf Boldrewood' Robbery Under
Arms 305 'The missus must ha' been awful frightened, and the young ladies
too.'
1899 'Steele Rudd' On Our Selection 37 'Leave me alone
when I'm chopping wood for the missus,' the man answered, then smiled and
muttered to himself.
1903 Joseph Furphy Such Is Life 369 'S'pose you
'll have to go,' says the missus – for the bosses was both away at another
place they got.
1905, 1936, 1938 see citations at boss.
1915 Norman Lindsay The Comic Art of
Norman Lindsay (1987) 200 The Boss: 'Well, Jacky, I'm off to the war.' Jacky: 'Righto,
Boss. You not come back, I mind missus for yer.'
1947 Ion L. Idriess Over the Range xxii. 208 I
thought there might be trouble with the missus if I engaged a one-time murderer
as nursemaid.
1958 Olaf Ruhen Naked Under
Capricorn xii. 182 Marriner's suspicion was that now the men were back at the
homestead and camp life was over for a month or two, Activity resented the new
house and 'the Missus.'
1965 see citation at boss.
1967 Jean Brooks The Opal Witch (1970) ix. 59
'What – because of Sid? Don't be silly.' 'No. 'cos of the missus comin' back.'
1982 see citation at boss.
1994 Herb Wharton Cattle Camp 76 The cowboy's
boss was usually the missus[.]
Notes: See notes at boss.
mob n. a group of people sharing the same identity.
1831 The Australian 6 Jun 525/5 In
this scene will be introduced the celebrated comic pas deux by Dusty Bob and
Black Sal, and a characteristic reel by the whole mob.
Notes: Predating AND 1848. From an unverified citation card of Ted
Hartley's.
mongrel n. a despicable person.
1902 Barbara Baynton Bush Studies 97 'Well some of
these days I'm goin' down ter Sydney,' he continued, 'an' I'll collar thet one
'cos it's a good likerness of ther 'orses – you'd know their 'ide on a gum-tree
– an' that mean mongrel never paid me ther five bob.'
1903 Joseph Furphy Such Is Life 13 'O, go an' bark
up a tree, you mongrel!' replied the war-material, with profusion of adjective.
'Fat lot o' good tailin' you up!'
1913 Norma Lindsay A Curate in
Bohemia i. 4 One sorely tried person had left this cryptic statement, 'Liar and
slave, strikes him!' and fled in anger. Others were content with such simple
epithets as, 'Mongrel,' 'Procrastinator,' 'Hound of Crete!'[.]
1917 'Henry Handle Richardson' Australia
Felix 306 'And I should feel it my duty to do the same again to-morrow; though
there are pleasanter things in life, Mary, I can assure you, than informing a
low mongrel like Ocock that his wife is drinking on the sly.'
1923 D.H. Lawrence Kangaroo [Project Gutenberg]
One evening Sharpe was called out from the drawing-room: detectives in the hall
enquiring about Somers, where he got his money from, etc., etc., such clowns,
louts, mongrels of detectives.
1933 John Truran Where the Plain
Begins II. i. 140 'But I come out of it as soon's there was a job offerin',
even though it meant crawlin' about the roads after sheep, along of a mongrel
like you.'
1948 Joseph Furphy The Buln-Buln and
the Brolga 'What's your name, you mongrel?' says the magistrate to me.
1954 Judah Waten The Unbending 273 'We don't want
to listen to your filthy talk, you Catholic mongrel,' an irate Orangeman
shouted from the fence.
1963 Frank Hardy Legends From
Benson's Valley 29 'What's the use of arguing with the old mongrel,'
Arty MacIntosh said as if money no longer mattered.
1971 Wal Watkins Andamooka xi. 112 'Close
your bar,' he said. Janosh stared at him. 'You're a mongrel.'
1984 David Malouf Harland's Half
Acre 176 I put my shirt on that mongrel, 'e was nipped at the post.
1993 Tim Winton Lockie Leonard:
Scumbuster 44 He was a mongrel breed, you could say, but not a mongrel of a bloke.
1995 Marianne Wood Just A Prostitute
52
'That mongrel used me up fast, but I still can't get him out of my system.'
Notes: Predating AND 1919, and interdating 1919 <> 1954. And some
postdating 1974, as well.
mongrel adj. despicable, dreadful, terrible.
1896 Henry Lawson 'His Country After
All' 'Why, it's only the mongrel desert, except some bits around the coast. The
worst dried-up and God-forsaken country I was ever in.'
1907 Henry Lawson The Romance of the
Swag 270 'Now, look here, you mongrel parson!' he said.
1961 Geoff Mill Nobody Dies But Me (2003) 8 He sent
off a raging memo to the mongrel warrant officer in charge of our marine
section[.]
1965 William Dick A Bunch of Ratbags
vii.
98 'That'll fix him, the mongrel Jew.'
1967 J.E. MacDonnell Dit Spinner ii. 53 To George
everything was 'mongrel'. He opined that he wanted his mongrel head read for
joining this mongrel outfit, while at the same time he was looking forward to
his mongrel leave; and (privately) loved his mongrel life aboard this mongrel
ship.
1973 in Bill Hornadge The Ugly
Australian (1975) 113 'You rotten, bloody, poofter, commo, mongrel bastard.'
1975 Xavier Herbert Poor Fellow My
Country 1426 Pat turned on them, brandishing his crutch, roaring, 'Shut up
yo'selves, you mongrel bastards, and give her a go!'
1989 Allan Skerman Beyond Indigo 381 'Get out while
your luck's in, you mongrel bastard.'
1990 Sam Watson The Kadaitcha Sung 96 'By gee I be
glad to get out of here, it's a real mongrel bloody place.'
Notes: The AND doesn't have a separate entry of the adjectival use of
mongrel, instead preferring to state merely "Also, attrib. and transf." – however, the
citations here suggest that it should be promoted to full adjectival status in
the next edition.
moral certainty n. an absolute certainty.
1803 Sydney Gazette 16 Oct 3/1 However
NUMEROUS the houses in town may be yet one moral certainty exists that they are
no longer NUMBERLESS.
Notes: Predating OED 1868.
mosh game n. a type of gambling game.
1956 Vince Kelly The Bogeyman ii. 23 In that
role of Joe Chuck was to get the information that enabled him to plan raids on
two-up schools, mosh games, opium dens, and other activities that had
successfully defied the law.
Notes: Postdating AND 1934
mug copper n. a police officer.
1949 Jon Cleary The Long Shadow (1968) v. 40 'And
I'm not going to be chucked out on my neck to let some bloody mug copper move
in on it!'
1953 [C.A. Wright] Caddie: A Sydney
Barmaid (1966) i. 5 The police departed, leaving a group of women standing
outside the pub, calling out their opinions of the mug coppers, and that ditry
bitch in there, meaning the Missus.
1956 Vince Kelly The Bogeyman ii. 25 'Go on,
Louis! Bite the bloody mug copper!'
1963 Bernard Hesling The
Dinkumization and Depommification of an artful English Immigrant 116 'Now would I,
with the whole of King's Cross to choose from, pick out a heavyweight mug
copper?'
1969 Alex Buzo Norm and Ahmed 31 'Mind you,
though, if a mug copper ever started pushing me around, I'd job him good and
proper, no risk about that.'
1978 John Hepworth John Hepworth:
His Book 164 Apart from sharing the nationwide constabulary sensitivity to being
called 'mug coppers' or 'wallopers', the Canberra fuzz are particularly touchy
about two things.
1996 Sydney City Hub 4 Apr 5/2 My
father was already doing some anticipatory laughing, as Roy went on, 'and this
mug copper comes up, and starts having a go at him.'
Notes: Not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND. The implication is that all
police officers are stupid bastards.
mug lair n. a fool with tickets on themself.
1944 Lawson Glassop We Were The Rats
II.
xxv. 146 'Well, they're singin' an' prayin' an' hallelujahin' there for a while
an' a coupler mug lairs starts ter chip 'em.'
1948 Sumner Locke Elliott Rusty
Bugles 25 'You're a mug lair.'
Notes: Predating AND 1965.
mug punter n. a gambler on horse or greyhound racing,
especially a stupid one.
1966 James Holledge The Great
Australian Gamble vi. 58 For all that the hard-headed businessman was
in no danger of developing into a mug punter.
1969 Wilda Moxham The Apprentice (1991) xii. 133
'I'm just another mug punter far as he knows, mind.'
1986 Frank Hardy Hardy's People 13 Truthful Jones
definition of a mug punter: 'The bloke who put his last $100 for the place on
an odds-on favourite, it ran third, paid a money back dividend – and he lost
the ticket.'
1993 TV Week (Sydney) 13 Feb
24 Mind you, there have been a lot of tears and muttered curses as well – from
mug punters who put their beer money on the 'red-hot, dead-cert, sure-fire'
tips these boys purport to have the mail on every week.
Notes: Not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND. From the bookmakers'
perspective, all punters are mug punters! The OED records a sole citation of
this compound from British crime writer Edgar Wallace from 1922, and according
to Google the term is alive and well and living in the UK.
mull v.t. to prepare marijuana for smoking, generally by cutting it up with
scissors in a mull bowl and usually adding tobacco, or sometimes other herbs.
Also, mull up.
1985 Tracks (Sydney) Oct 7
Method: Mull all herbs (dry mix). Sprinkle on preheated hash.
1986 Tracks (Sydney) Feb 17 He
made some waves into foam, / while his girls back at home / mulled up the rest
of the hash.
1987 Kathy Lette Girls' Night Out (1995) 15 He
would like his women wild. Mull up.
1997 John Birmingham The Tasmanian
Babes Fiasco 215 I remember there'd been so much shit to get through that we'd
stopped bothering to mull it up.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND. The form mull up can be used
intransitively as well. Etymologically an extension of mull 'to heat,
sweeten, and spice wine for drinking'.
mull n. marijuana; marijuana prepared for smoking.
1987 Tracks (Sydney) Dec 23/4
'They said if I didn't smoke their two ounces of heavy-duty mull, man, then
they'd kill ... er ... they'd kill you, Boss!'
1988 Tracks (Sydney) Feb 3/3
There are still many pockets of resistors that convince themselves that a good
mull before a surf is the only way to go[.]
1989 Opus May 22 Got some
filters, or there's some mull on the coffee table.
1990 Advertiser (Adelaide) 12 Jan
10 The Marijuana Users Legalisation Lobby (MULL) believes that legalising drug
use will: destroy the black market...
1992 Tracks (Sydney) Oct 13
The amount of mull you guys pack in is amazing. Ever since I gave up the mull,
my surfing has jumped to new heights.
1996 Underground Surf Aut 62/1 The guys
up there are really committed travelling surfers, so they're not big on the
mull.
1996 Linda Jaivin Rock n Roll Babes
from Outer Space 124 Tristram pinched some mull between his fingers
and examined it closely.
1997 Rants (Sydney) Oct 27 I
felt like a royal fuckwit re-entering the house for the mull.
1997 John Birmingham The Tasmanian
Babes Fiasco 204 He'd swapped a jaffle maker and a curling wand from Jordan's place
for a small stick of mull and a bottle of Stone's green ginger wine.
1999 Robert G. Barrett The Wind and
the Monkey 118 Kick back, maybe smoke some of that mull that turned Kastrine Kreen
into a serial rapist and get into a bit of music.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
mull bowl n. a bowl used to prepare marijuana for
smoking.
1992 Andrew McGahan Praise xxxiii. 193 Then
he rolled his fingers round in the mull bowl.
1995 Harrison Biscuit The Search for
Savage Henry 60 There were a few flecks left in the mull bowl[.]
1997 John Birmingham The Tasmanian
Babes Fiasco 119 They both meandered off into the house to see if they could scrape
up the fixings from last night's mull bowl leftovers.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
mullhead n. a marijuana addict.
1988 Tracks (Sydney) Feb 3/3
I believe that the tide is turning and as this generation of surfers becomes
tomorrow's adults they will leave the drugs to the westies and the surfing
'mull-heads' will become a dinosaur.
1996 Underground Surf Aut 62/1 What sort
of crew do you have up there? There'd be a lot of mullheads, wouldn't there?
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
munjon n. an Aboriginal living traditionally.
1947 Ion L. Idriess Over the Range ii. 6 Davey was a
smart young aboriginal who, only three years before, had been a munjon (wild bush
blackfellow).
Notes: Predating AND 1948.
nags, the n. the horseraces.
1964 George Johnston My Brother Jack
vii.
123 'So I could still send Mum her money and have enough for smokes and a
schooner or two and five bob each way on the nags of a Saturday.'
1972 Judah Waten Season of Youth 32 I just couldn't
go up to people and talk them blind about Ernie's tips. I didn't know anything
about the nags and I'd only look silly if I tried to palm myself off as an
expert.
1993 TV Week (Sydney) 13 Feb
24 Aside from their failings as tipsters, two more affable blokes you wouldn't
find. They like their job, and each other, have a yarn for every occasion and
share a deep love of all sport – including the nags.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
Naussie n. a New Australian.
1953 Sidney J. Baker Australia Speaks
vii.
224 The colloquial form Naussie has now developed.
1954 Josef Holman As I See Them (The Aussies
and the Naussies) 67 But, as the majority of people say, you can't
judge the lot by an individual (though they do judge us by the 'bad' Naussies).
1966 Sidney J. Baker The Australian
Language (2nd ed.) x. 215 Naussie, a New Australian.
1977 Jim Ramsay Cop It Sweet! 62 naussie: New Australian, migrant.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND. A delightful portmanteau word that never
really caught on. But, worth recording nonetheless.
near enough phr. that will do.
1910 C.E.W. Bean On the Wool Track iii. 23 But he
also acquired a terrible habit of leaving a thing when it is 'near enough'.
1934 Thomas Wood Cobbers xv. 176 They're
near enough; they'll do; like so many other things in Australia.
Notes: Predating AND 1939.
nick v.i. to move quickly.
1894 Ethel Turner Seven Little
Australians xii. 153 'Meg could talk to father,' Bunty said, 'and Pip could keep
teasing General till Esther would be frightened to leave the room, and then me
and Judy would nick down and have a run, and get back before you let them go.'
Notes: Predating AND 1896 (incidentally, also Ethel Turner)
niner n. a nine gallon beer keg.
1957 'Nino Culotta' They're A Weird
Mob
viii. 107 'There will be many men at this party?' ''Bout thirty or forty, if
they all turn up.' 'Who's bringin' the niners?'
Notes: Predating AND 1960.
nobblerise n. to drink nobblers of spirits.
1924 Gilbert H. Lawson A Dictionary
of Australian Words and Terms NOBBLERISE – To drink
frequently.
Notes: Postdating AND 1899. This isn't much of a citation as it is
merely a secondary source. Nevertheless, it suggests that the term perhaps
still lingered as late as the 1920s.
nog/noggy n. a Korean; hence, an oriental person.
1953 Sidney J. Baker Australia Speaks
vii.
178 The most notable neologisms from Korea have been nog and noggie, applied to a
South Korean native[.]
Notes: Predating AND 1969 (nog) and 1954 (noggy). Baker gives his source
for this information, namely the 1952 West Australian (Perth) 13 May
1/3-4. The AND can be forgiven for missing these as the the terms were omitted
from the index of Baker's book.
nudge, give it a phr. to get stuck into the booze.
1953 Sidney J. Baker Australia Speaks
vii.
171 nudge. – Used with relation to drinking, e.g. give it a nudge, nudge it, to drink alcoholic
liquor.
1961 Robert S. Close With Hooves of
Brass v. 48 It was clear they had been giving the grog a nudge.
1962 W.R. Bennett Night Intruder iv. 73 'It's
about time we gave it a bit of a nudge! That's one of the drawbacks with this
flamin' night racket – interferes with a bloke's grogging.'
Notes: Predating AND 1966 (citing
Baker – see note at boofhead). Hence, the following:
nudge v.t. to drink
(alcohol).
1953 as above.
1963 Len Such A Yen for Yokohama v. 57 Then I went
to dig the Fourth mate out. He had come to life and had some whisky so we
nudged it with milk.
1985 'Sir Les Patterson' The
Traveller's Tool (1986) iv. 26 Gwen had never been much of a drinker,
though her Aunty Kath who's a nun, really used to nudge the turps[.]
Notes: Not recorded in Wilkes, AND.
off adj. disgusting or revolting; also, unfair, 'slack'.
1986 Simon French All We Know (1988) ii. 8
They're really off, those things. That's why I like them.
1987 Jenny Pausacker What are ya? xi. 70 'I reckon
it's a bit off, kids like us making out we're Toorak types[.]'
1987 Kathy Lette Girls' Night Out (1995) 85 They
gawped at the derros and prostitutes and drooled, 'Do something off. Go on.'
1988 'Kylie Mole' (Maryanne Fahey) My
Diary 3 Imagine that, cleaning the house on your own birthday! I reckon that
is off.
1990 Sun-Herald (Sydney) 18 Feb
128/4 off, foul, gross and vom (all mean horrible).
1996 Linda Jaivin Rock n Roll Babes
from Outer Space 99 That's fucken off. What's so
special about Earthlings anyway?
Notes: Not recorded in Wilkes, AND. Especially common amongst schoolkids
and adolescents.
one n. a drink of beer.
1916 C.J. Dennis The Songs of a Sentimental
Bloke I meets 'im Choosdee ev'nin' up the town. / 'Wot O,' 'e chips me. 'Kin
yeh keep one down?' / I sez I can.
1921 John O'Brien Around the Boree Log 93 Up
the spout and ringin' bells / As 'Teddo Wells, deceased'; / Never noticed up
the town, / Never asked to keep one down – / Groomin' for the priest.
1924 Gilbert H. Lawson A Dictionary
of Australian Words and Terms 28 stop
one – To take a drink.
1929 Katherine Susannah Prichard Coonardoo (The Well in
the Shadow) xxix. 178 'Hi, Dick,' he called, 'could you stop one?' 'Too right,'
the stranger's voice sang out. He slouched into the kitchen; his keen hungry
eyes travelled to Coonardoo. 'How about it, Coonardoo?' Geary held the bottle
over a glass invitingly.
1936 Andrew Russell Gone Nomad 78 Then, jerking
his fingers knowingly, 'I s'pose yer could stop one?' I could. I needed that
rum.
1937 Frank Clune Dig: A Drama of Central
Australia iv.
15 Despite the fact that Dost Mahomet and his merry
men could not speak the Queen's English, as it was spoken in Melbourne, they
well understood the meaning of the old colonial phrase, 'Can you keep one
down?'
1959 F.B. McCann Medicine Man 176
I ventured to suggest that he might be able to 'keep one down' and nearly
collapsed when he replied, 'Thanks, mate, but I'd better not.'
Notes: Predating AND 1945. Two questions common among Australian
drinkers since the 1910s have been "Can you keep one down?" and "Can you stop
one" – both of which entail the same meaning.
on for young and old phr. of a fight,
unrestrained.
1947 John Morrison in Stories of the
Waterfront 69 'Spare me days, Plug started something when he bought that kid the
ice-cream! It's on now for young and old. Half the wharf-crowd's running up and
down the gangway with ice-creams.'
Notes: Predating Wilkes 1951.
optic nerve n. rhyming slang for 'perve'. Also, shortened
to optic.
1974 Barry Humphries A Nice Night's
Entertainment 146 If you like grouse gear, take an optic at these three big performers
just come in the yard.
1977 Jim Ramsey Cop It Sweet! 66 optic nerve: rhym. perve.
1985 'Sir Les Patterson' The
Traveller's Tool (1986) ix. 67 She locked the door too and after
taking a quick optic at some of the literature on my locker, I realised I'd
been doped up and bunged into the Betty Ford Foundation.
1992 Tracks (Sydney) Oct 28 However,
we do like to encourage free enterprise and we want you to be able to rent the
tape out to your mates so they can have an optic nerve on female lead Lori
Petty[.]
1996 Tracks (Sydney) Jun 43
[caption] Some things are the same at surf contests the world over: the chicks
do aerobics ... And the blokes go the big optic nerve.
Notes: Not recorded in Wilkes, AND.
op shop n. an opportunity shop.
1976 Phillip Adams The Unspeakable
Adams 127 Or else they rematerialise in a sort of transcendental op-shop, a purgatory
for possessions.
Notes: Predating AND 1978.
Orstalia n. Australia
1904 E.S. Emerson ("Milky
White") in Stewart and Keesing Australian Bush Ballads (1955) 252
Notes: Predating AND 1918. It should be noted that this very citation
does appear in the AND entry, mis-dated as 1955. Here, also, are some further
examples:
1929 C.J. Dennis in The C.J. Dennis Collection 43 i
was ixcited enuf on saterdy an i shud ave rit you then an sung me peens of joy
on orstralias victry
1933 Ernest O'Ferrall Stories by
"Kodak" 56 'They don't give a man a charnce in
Orstralia!'
1956 Arthur Upfield The Battling Prophet 77 'Greatest
disaster that ever happened to Orstralia, that fortune-telling, star-gazing crook.'
Orstalian n. Australian
1929 C.J. Dennis in The C.J. Dennis Collection 34
wot sort of umpirin do thay cal that the man sittin nex me will git wot es
lookin for if he dont stop chipin the orstralians
1932 Leonard Mann Flesh in Armour (1944) i. 15 'Another
of these Orstrilians drunk as usual in the sort of company to be expected, a
young trollop off the streets.'
1980 Shirley Hazzard The Transit Of Venus xv. 125 The Major said languages were unusual in an Orstrylian.
Notes: Predating AND 1948. Plus further examples.
oval v.t. to bend the ring of a leg-iron into an oval, in order to effect an
escape.
1798 William Noah A Voyage to Sydney
in New South Wales in 1798 & 1799 18 December 1798 Saturday 1st
Instant Moderate & Fair Nothing remarkable Sunday 2nd Do.... Do thro some
tales being told a fresh Disturbance arose every Man Examin'd & Several of
the Basils of the Irons being found Ovald they was fresh Iron'd Handcuff'd and
Shackeld two and two.
1874 Marcus Clarke His Natural Life 132 Having come to
this resolution, the next thing was to disencumber himself of his irons. This
was more easily done than he expected. He found in the shed an iron gad, and
with that and a stone he drove out the rivets. The rings were too strong to be
"ovalled",* or he would have been free long ago. [footnote: * "Ovalled" is a
term in use among convicts, and means to so bend the round ring of the ankle
fetter that the "heel" can be drawn up through it.]
Notes: Not recorded in Baker, Wilkes, AND. A long obsolete piece of genuine
convict slang.
pack-rape n. rape by a gang of men in succession.
1970 Suzy Jarratt Permissive
Australia i. 28 Their motor bikes are ugly and dangerous. So are they. Rockers'
kicks come from pack rape and wanton destruction.
Notes: Predating AND 1976.
panic merchant n. an inveterate panicker.
1962 W.R. Bennett Target Turin vi. 105 'I reckon
he's a real panic merchant,' grunted Storm. 'He's been scared stiff ever since
the briefing.'
1966 Sidney J. Baker The Australian
Language (2nd ed.) x. 214 panic merchant, one who gives
way to panic in any situation of alarm[.]
1969 Wilda Moxham The Apprentice (1991) i. 4 The
old geezer would be as good as new today if he hadn't shone a torch on Dicky,
who, as it turned out, was a panic merchant.
1975 Xavier Herbert Poor Fellow My
Country 13 A couple of egrets and a blue crane rose from the timber of the creek
and came sailing to take a look at him, to swing away croaking contempt for
such panic-merchants as took for the Old One or a henchman of his one small boy
who wasn't even properly black.
Notes: Not in Wilkes, AND.
pash n. a passionate kiss or kissing session.
1962 W.R. Bennett Target Turin iv. 74 'Get a
load of the pash-session! Somebody's on a good wicket there.'
1964 Dymphna Cusack Black Lightning ii. 52 The last
pash party I went to, and I mean the last, for after that I let Legal accept,
and just didn't arrive.
1967 Len Riley The Kings Cross
Racket 114 'Come on, baby, give your blue-eyed blond boy a pash.'
1979 Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette Puberty
Blues 23 You'd go out with the gang to a party and when everyone else paired
off, he'd lead you outside for a pash on the front fence, or a 'finger' behind
the Holden, or a 'titoff' down the other end of the hall nearly in the linen
press.
1998 Phillip Gwynne Deadly Unna? x. 59 Got a pash
in the bushes.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
pash v.t. to kiss passionately. Also, pash off.
1979 Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette Puberty
Blues 104 Wayne pashed me off and I got out of the car.
1996 Sydney Star Observer 9 Feb 28/1 For the
record, Harriet's seduction was unsuccessful, and she then went and pashed Noel
Ferrier, leaving her chewing gum in his mouth.
1996 Linda Jaivin Rock n Roll Babes
from Outer Space 95 Their way took them past a small park, a large
hospital and onto Oxford Street, where Earth boys stood in the doorways of pubs
pashing off other Earth boys, and Earth girls knit their fingers together in
lust.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND. Actually, to pash off is to kiss someone
to satiety.
pash v.i. to engage in passionate kissing. Also, pash off and pash on.
1983 Kerry Cue Crooks, Chooks and
Bloody Ratbags (1988) v. 71 For entertainment, they packed the back seats of the Shire
Hall each Saturday night to watch the flicks and 'pash on' as soon as the
lights went out.
1987 Jenny Pausacker What are ya? ix. 61 Xenia
bounded up to tell them that Leith had pashed on with Mark Douglas for half an
hour, then gone off somewhere with him.
1988 Kylie Mole (Maryanne Fahey) My
Diary 5 'Oh don't worry, yer mother and I used to pash when we were kids.'
1992 Picture (Sydney) May 6 In
one of the most encouraging developments since blokes started pashing with
trees[.]
1994 John Birmingham He died with a
felafel in his hand ix. 198 They both came as ghosts and ended up pashing
off under a tangle of white sheets on the road in front of the house.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND. Actually, to pash off and pash on is to engage in
prolonged kissing.
pashing n. passionate kissing.
1964 Dymphna Cusack Black Lightning ii. 51 A System of
Numbers (One to Fourteen) gives you the clew to the amount of pashing a vergin
or near vergin permits and expects.
1988 Kylie Mole (Maryanne Fahey) My
Diary 99 Pashing is somethink you shood only do wif your own boyfriend[.]
1996 Captial Q Weekly (Sydney) 29 Mar
34/1 People are often left with love bites on these after a heavy session of
pashing.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
pash-off n. an act of kissing.
1996 Sydney Star Observer 15 Feb 22/1 And
I'd like to reiterate my volunteering to work the same-sex pash-off entry
requirement booth at the party.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
pash-on n. a passionate kissing session.
1990 The Dinkum Dictionary Of
Australian English 58 Pash-on. A prolonged heavy kissing, petting,
groping session.
Notes: Not in Baker, Wilkes, AND.
part adv. partly descended from a non-Aboriginal race.
1953 Coralie Rees Spinifex Walkabout
vii.
88 Most of the aboriginal and part-aboriginal children of Broome – about ninety
at this time – went to the convent school where were no white children.
ibid. xiii. 165 On the subject of
coloured or part-coloured adults we found Mr Moy thinking, in line with a lot
of other people, that they should have "citizen rights" automatically[.]
ibid. xix. 276 There was no doubt about
the rapid increase of part-bloods: from a few thousands in the early years of
the century they had reached a total of about 30,000.
Notes: Predating AND 1959.
part up v.i. to pay up.
1933 [Ernest O'Ferrall] Stories by
"Kodak" 54 'You part up that munney! Go on!'
1951 Dal Stivens Jimmy Brockett 44 'But they'd
part up gladly if they got a run for their money.'
1971 Frank Hardy The Outcasts of
Foolgarah v. 49 Then a batch of building workers, true ragged-trouser
philanthropists, as it transpired, when asked to part up for the Garbos.
Notes: Interdating and postdating AND 1923 <> 1953.
Pat Malone, on one's phr. on one's own
1905
