Illustrated Dictionary of
Australian English

M

mad: exciting, very good; Check out this mad video.
mad as a cut snake: crazy, insane
mad as a meat axe: extremely angry
mad mick: a pick; They used mad micks to break the rocks.; rhyming slang: mad mick for pick
maggie: a magpie; An affectionate name for the magpie, a bird which during the breeding season attacks people.; aussie diminutive
maggies: the magpies; An AFL team from Collingwood, Melbourne.
Car'n the maggies!; aussie rules slang
maggoty: in a bad mood
magic pudding: a never-ending or endlessly renewable source
malabar hilton: long bay correctional centre in malabar, sydney nsw
malarky: foolish talk
mallee: the remote rural district of victoria; john williamson mallee boy
mallee bull ∼ fit as a mallee bull: superbly fit, strong, and healthy; So named after the rural district in Victoria known as The Mallee.
mango madness: a feeling of oppression at a time when mangoes are abundant; Afflicts residents of the top end during the build-up to the wet season. Marked by an increase in heat and humidity, causing tension and irritability.
Also called suicide season or simply troppo.
map of Tassie: a woman 's pubic area
manchester: household linen; Also the department of a shop where such goods are sold.
man in white: an aussie rules goal umpire; Less affectionately known as a white maggot.
Nowadays the uniforms are more colourful, but the phrase remains.; aussie rules slang
mate: 1 friend; Haven't seen you in ages, mate.
2 any male person; Look here mate…; Perhaps the importance that Australia places on mateship can be attributed to its history as an immigrant nation.
Convicts, orphans, prostitutes and lone individuals came to Australia without families. Consequently, their friends subsituted for their lack of a family network. In many respects, mates serve the role that family serves in other countries. Mates can be relied upon in times of need and will stand by you through the good times and the bad.
m a a a t e: a long drawn out way of saying mate.; Used in various contexts:
As a friendly greeting when pleased to see your mate.
As a way of cajoling a mate into agreeing with you.
As a way of placating a mate who is agitated. In 2009 Tony Abbott went from supporting an emissions trading scheme to opposing one in the space of a few months.

M a a a t e, I know I'm a bit of a weathervane on this …

…he told Malcolm Turnbull afterwards
mate's rates: discount given to a friend
Marrickville Mercedes: a derisive term for a chrysler valiant; The Sydney suburb of Marrickville has a large ethnic population, among whom this make of car used to be popular.; sydney slang
matilda: a swag; The blanket-wrapped roll carried by a swagman, who is said to be waltzin' matilda

M

me: my; Aussie pronounciation of the first-person possessive.
I've got me wobbly boots on…
Where's me flanno?
meccano set: an enormously large set of traffic lights; Located at the intersection of the Hume Hwy and Henry Lawson Dr, near Liverpool in Sydney.
Turn left at the meccano set; sydney slang
metho: methylated spirits drinker; Hence a metho drinker is a character who has sunk so low that he ignores its foul taste and lethal potential because of its high alcohol content and low price. See goom for more.
middy: beer served in a 285 ml glass; Chiefly a NSW term, although understood around the country.
See beer, schooner, and seven for more information.; nsw slang
milk bar: corner shop; A general store selling a variety of food and drinks.
Also known as a deli in SA, WA, Qld, and elsewhere. This milk bar is located in Essendon, Vic.; since the 1950s
missus: the woman of the house on a rural property; Traditionally having jurisdiction over the affairs of the homestead, she is the counterpart to the boss.
The term is now used throughout the country to refer to one's wife or girlfriend.

M

mob: any group of people or animals; An aboriginal australian english word referring to any group sharing similar interests or peculiarities.
Mob o' sheep
They're a weird mob down in Melbourne.
Ring the mob that fixed our car.; aboriginal australian english
mockers: jinx or curse; Hence, to thwart someone's efforts or cause them to have bad luck.
I can't take a trick, someone's put the mockers on me!; since the 1920s
molly dooker: left handed
mollycoddle: to pamper or make a fuss over someone
mongrel: despicable person or thing; Mongrel of a car.
More rain! What a mongrel day it'll be.
monkey suit: dinner suit
mooch: to wander aimlessly; I'm going for a mooch around the town.
moo juice: milk
moolah: money; We've got enough moolah for a truckload of piss!; an americanism since 1939
Moomba: a festival held annually in melbourne; The Moomba Festival, is the largest free community festival in Australia. It was renamed Melbourne Moomba Waterfest in 2003 and is centered on the Yarra river.
It has been celebrated since 1955 during the Labour Day long weekend over four days in March, with a record attendance of 3.8 million people in 2018.
mop: hair on the head
more hits than Elvis: a car with many dents and scratches; It could also be described as having had more hits than the Beatles.
motza: a lot of money; From the Yiddish word matzah, meaning unleaved bread, (bread being another word for money).
moz: to jinx; To put the moz on is to have an evil influence on someone.
From the Yiddish word mazzal, meaning luck.
mozzie: a mosquito; aussie diminutive

M

muddie: a mud crab; A large edible crab, Scylla serrata, found in mangrove regions and adjacent waters of the coastline of northern WA, NT, Qld and NSW.
Also called a mangrove crab.
muff: the vagina
mug: 1 a fool or a novice; A bloke who hasn't got a clue.
2 a con-man's victim; A bloke who is easily taken in is also called a sucker.
3 the face; Most people with ugly mugs have a pleasant disposition.
4 a type of large metal or porcelain cup for tea, coffee, etc; a glass mug is for beer.
munchies: hunger induced by marijuana
mullet: male hairstyle; Long at the back and short at the front & sides
Business at the front, party at the back!
mullygrubber: a ball that doesn 't bounce after pitching; A type of delivery that is low to the ground.
You should put Stevo in to bowl next, he might produce one of his legendary mullygrubbers!
See leggie, offie and flipper for more deliveries.; coined by cricket legend richie benaud
muster: the gathering together of livestock in one place, a round-up of stock; This sense of muster is transferred from a military use meaning a calling together of soldiers, sailors, prisoners, etc... a roll-call.
In Australia this military sense was applied specifically to a routine assembly of convicts in order to ascertain that they were all present.
In the colonial period it referred to a census of the whole population.; the transferred sense to livestock is recorded from the 1830s
mutt: a dog
Myers ∼ more front than…: overly impudent; From the Melbourne department store, which has a large frontage to Bourke Street.
A similar phrase is more hide than Jessie.

Welcome to Australia!

This is a peculiar country where the principles of culture appear to have been turned upside down. Australians seem blissfully unaware of the achievements of their intellectuals… yet they will celebrate long dead horses, yobbo sportsmen, and bushrangers.

They often forget the words of their national anthem… yet it would be wrong to say they are not patriotic, as a song about a suicidal sheep thief seems to instil them with a great deal of pride.

If they like you, they will not give you compliments. Instead, they might call you names like bastard or drongo — and then laugh at all the silly things you have done. If you have red hair, you might be called Bluey. If you are tall, you might be called Shorty. If you are quiet, you might be called Rowdy.

There is no better way of life in the world than that of the Australian.
I firmly believe this.

The grumbling, growling, cursing, profane, laughing, beer drinking, abusive, loyal-to-his-mates Australian is one of the few free men left on this earth.

He fears no one, crawls to no one, bludgers on no one, and acknowledges no master.

Learn his way. Learn his language. Get yourself accepted as one of him; and you will enter a world that you never dreamed existed.

And once you have entered it, you will never leave it.

Australian history is almost always picturesque; indeed, it is also so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place.

It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies; and all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones.

It is full of surprises and adventures, the incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.
Mark Twain, 1897

Australian Cities

Adelaide after Queen Adelaide, wife of the British monarch William IV. Brisbane after Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of NSW in 1823. Canberra after a stock station named Canberry. Darwin after Charles Darwin, the naturalist. Hobart after Lord Hobart, the Secretary of State for the Colonies.. Melbourne after Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister of England. Perth after the Scottish city. Sydney after Lord Sydney, the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

first australians

Long before a word of English was ever spoken in Australia, the Aboriginal languages were heard all over the continent.

Each group or mob has its own language, but those languages spoken close to what later became the main centres of European population were those which have had the most influence on modern Aussie English.

Aboriginal words are likely to have been absorbed into Aussie English as local leaders from both native groups and colonists tried to find some tentative common ground; and as the new arrivals sought to find names for the strange new things they were seeing.

Aboriginal words common in Aussie English include yakka, meaning work–common usage is the collocation ‘hard yakka’, and cooee, first used by Aboriginal people calling each other through the bush.

Also of indigenous origin is bung, from the language Yagara in the Brisbane region, meaning "dead" and by extension "broken" or "useless".

Many place names are Aboriginal — the capital Canberra is so‑named because it means "meeting place" in Ngunnawal, the traditional language of the Ngunnawal and Gandangara peoples.

Commonly used Aboriginal words include many animal names, such as kookaburra, koala, wallaby and dingo.

animals of australia

immigrant influences

Whether convicts or willing migrants, the Europeans who found their way to Australia from the eighteenth century onwards came from a wide range of different groups.

At that time, there were great differences between different British English dialects, so that convicts from different regions of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland would all have spoken very differently.
Some would not have spoken English at all – being Irish or Scots Gaelic or Welsh speakers.

To understand each other, these groups would have begun to create a common language, and words from various dialects would have become part of a new slang and new idioms.

new australians

The children of those early settlers would have been keen to mark themselves out as Australians, rather than Irish or English, and that meant that new accents and speech patterns developed as quickly as the colony itself did.

It was almost as if an informal Australian school of English and Irish arrivals alike had set itself up. Words which found their way into the language via the convicts include tucker, an Irish word for food, and swag a word from the criminal underworld meaning a parcel of goods taken by a thief, but coming to mean a bushman's bag.

the gold rush days

This era brought words such as fossick into common usage.

The Gold Rush Days

the bushrangers

Many terms come from the bushranger tradition, such as bush telegraph, bail up, and game as Ned Kelly.

the first world war

WWⅠ added another layer of slang, such as dinkum , meaning genuine or real.

Australian English is peppered with unique slang words and particular types of phraseology such as strine and ocker.

diminutives in australia

The use of diminutive forms of words such as arvo for afternoon or barbie for barbecue is common. Some words, such as ute, from utility vehicle, a car with a tray back, have become universal.

While many languages make use of diminutives, Aussie English uses them extensively – there are over 5,000 identified diminutives in use in Australia.

let stalk strine!

Professor Lauder knows the answers‼

Do you have a Gloria Soame?
What are sex? What is an egg nishner? And where checque etcher londger ray?

australian gazetteer

the most comprehensive atlas you have ever seen

From Adavale (Qld) to Zeehan (Tas), this atlas will locate any town in Australia.

The Australian Gazetteer »

Australian Colours

The Australian Independent Colour Standard AS 2700 was created in 1985. It is used in choosing colour schemes in the industrial, architectural, and decorative areas.

AS 2700 in HTML

More Words in The Illustrated Dictionary

Illustrated Dictionary of Australian English

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Illustrated Dictionary of
Australian English