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Illustrated Dictionary of Australian English

Words and Phrases in Afferbeck Lauder

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ocker: 1 an uncultivated australian male

From Ocker, a popular 60's television character, always portrayed in shorts, singlet and thongs, sinking a beer and talking with a broad aussie accent.
2 anything typically australian

3 aussie english
ocky strap: an elastic strap used to tie down loads aussie diminutive: ocky for octopus
odds-on: a certainty
It's odds-on he'll be at the pub.
aussie slang since the 1890s
off: 1 when the beer's off
You wait for it to come back on again.
2 when the meat's off
You throw it away because it has gone bad.
3 when a place is going off
Everyone is having a good time.
4 when you blow off
You'll be abusing someone.
5 when you piss off
You'll be leaving, which you may be asked to do if you
tell a story that's a bit off.
off like a bucket of prawns ∼ in the midday sun: extremely rotten, stinking.
offie: 1 an off-break
A ball which, when a right-hander is facing, changes direction from off to leg when it pitches.
The spin is generated by the first and second fingers of the right hand.; 2 a bowler who specialises in off-break deliveries
The most popular method of spin in cricket.
See leggie and flipper for more.
cricket slang
off like a bride's nightie: to depart quickly
Or to move with a sudden burst of speed.
racing slang
offside: opposed, uncooperative
Buy him a beer, don't get him offside.
offsider: an assistant at work
Originally a bullocky's term for a bullock yoked to the offside (the right-hand side), and hence his assistant who attended to these bullocks.
aussie slang since the late 19th century
oi: hey you
Oi, what do you think you're up to?
oil: reliable news or information
Generally qualified in some way, such as good oil , or dinkum oil .
Roughly equivalent to drum, except when it is used as a verb, in which case it is always followed by the word up Did you get the drum for the next race?
Yeah. Joe oiled me up aussie slang since 1910
old cheese: your wife
rhyming slang since the 1970s: cheese and kisses for missus
old fella: penis
olds: parents
Also known as the oldies or the old folks.
Your mother is the old dear, your father is the old man.
aussie slang since the 1970s
old hand: an experienced person
old man kangaroo: an adult male kangaroo
first recorded in 1827
on: 1 something about to function or occur
Are the races still on?
2 to be attached romantically
Is Joe still on with that shelia?
3 to draw attention to somebody
What a galah! Be on him, will ya?
4 to back a contestant or team
I'm on Bold Personality, what did you back, Fine Cotton?
on-baller: a player who is free to follow the ball anywhere on the ground
aussie rules
on for young and old: commotion
on the nose: smelly
on ya: good on you
oodles: plenty
Come over, we've got oodles of grog.
ooroo: goodbye, farewell
The unaspirated version of hooroo, itself a variation of “hooray”.
aussie slang since 1916
Opals: the aussie international women's basketball team
op-shop: opportunity shop
An outlet for second-hand goods, also called thrift stores, run by charitable organisations such as the Salvos or Vinnies.
open slather: a situation where there are no restraints
It's open slather at this bush pub on Sunday arvo. Often where the forces of law and order turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to infringement of regulations.
outback: the remote inland regions of australia
out of whack: not operating properly
outstation: an outlying sheep or cattle station or aboriginal settlement
over: to have lost enthusiasm for something
I'm over this bush pub.
overland: to drive cattle a long distance through the outback; For the drovers life has pleasures,
That the townsfolk never know.
Clancy of the Overflow by A.B. Paterson
oxford scholar: a dollar
rhyming slang : oxford scholar for dollar
Oz: australia
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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 Aboriginal origin is bung, from the aboriginal 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 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!

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

Professor Lauder knows the answers‼