The rhyming hoon is another great example of how language is always on the move. "… hornbag, snot block, checkout chick, houso, reg grundies, ambo, rurosexual, seppo, spunk rat (previously also spunk bubble), chateau cardboard, firie, tradie, trackie daks …"Īnd we continue to play with these terms - goon has been around for a while, but it keeps on inspiring new creations, including goon bag (1998), goon juice (2000), goon of fortune (2004), goon sack (2009), and so on. Just look at the slew of recent additions to the Australian National Dictionary (most stemming from the 1980s and 90s): It seems we get so obsessed with the death of Australian English that we miss those many great terms that are being created beneath our very eyes in Australia and by Australians. His own brilliant creation blurb for "a short publicity notice" was clearly one of the eggs that survived - and thrived. "… it is a frothy compound, and the bubbles break when the necessity of the hour is past, so that much of it is evanescent." "Like the eggs of the codfish, one survives and matures, while a million perish."Īn expression that fills a need becomes accepted but, as Burgess describes: Some align the disappearance of Aussie slang with Australia's maturing as a nation.Ĭertainly words, more than other aspects of language, are linked to life and culture, and perhaps the changes in Australian society are such that the days of the chiacking larrikin (or cheeky lovable prankster) have passed?īut it is the nature of slang that there will always be a turnover of terms - today's cobber is tomorrow's mate, ranga for a redhead replaces blue/bluey, bogan replaces ocker and so on.Īs American writer Gelett Burgess put it in his 1902 essay, In Defence of Slang: We asked you to share your favourite Aussie slang words in the comments. Sure, we have records of Australians "waltzing Matilda" in 1890, but Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were "waltzing" with this same meaning (albeit sans Matilda) in 1884. These included bonza/bonzer, which is probably from American English bonanza (originally from Spanish and used in the US in the 1840s for a successful gold mine).Įven waltzing - meaning carrying - is probably from American slang, or at least was used at the same time and in the same way. There was an influx of Americans to the goldfields from the 1850s, and they brought with them a bunch of American colloquialisms. It's also worth noting that some of what we consider to be true-blue slang in fact finds its origins in - hold onto your Akubra - early contact with American English. "… that influx of nauseous American slang and vile English which regularly appears upon the screen, and threatens to reduce the Australian vernacular to the level of the New York gutter-snipe." We commonly pin the blame for the death of Aussie slang on our anklebiters-cum-adolescents and their love of seppo (short for "septic tank", rhyming slang for Yank) slang.īut it's worth noting seppo influence has been a lexical and moral concern at least since the introduction of American "talkies" in the 1920s, as documented by historian Joy Damousi: Slang's not deadĮarly in 2017, the Australian pie company Four'N Twenty expressed its concern that Australians hadn't been "slinging slang" enough, and so launched its "Save Our Slang" campaign, aimed at promoting some 70 you-beaut, dinky-di, true-blue Aussie-isms ( bloke, bogan, grouse, straya, you bewdy, and so on).Ī few years earlier, in 2014, the appearance of Tony Thorne's Dictionary of Contemporary Slang sparked a series of articles heralding the end of the golden era of Australian slang, prompted by the fact that the work had added only three new (not terribly usual, to our mind) Australian terms: tockley, meaning penis, ort, meaning buttocks, and unit, meaning bogan). Yet, every few years there's a furphy that our beloved "Strine" slang is doing a Harold Holt. Slang had become an important way of fitting in and avoiding the label "stranger" (or "new chum") - and, as linguist Evan Kidd confirms, it still is. The cant of the underworld (so-called "flash" or "kiddy" language) flourished in these early days. "The base language of English thieves is becoming the established language of the colony … No doubt will be reckoned quite parliamentary, as soon as we obtain a parliament." The Australian attachment to slanguage (slang language) goes back to the earliest settlements of English speakers in Australia.Īs Edward Gibbon Wakefield noted in his 1829 letter from Sydney:
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