Australian English vocabulary

The origins of some of the words are disputed.

• Battler – a person with few natural advantages, who works doggedly and with little reward, who struggles for a livelihood and who displays courage. The first citation for this comes from Henry Lawson in While the Billy Boils (1896): "I sat on him pretty hard for his pretensions, and paid him out for all the patronage he'd worked off on me... and told him never to pretend to me again he was a battler".[4]
• Bludger – a person who avoids working, or doing their share of work, a loafer, scrounger, a hanger-on, one who does not pull his weight; originally, a pimp.[5]
• Bogan – an Australian term for describing someone who may be a yobbo (redneck). The major difference between the two is that yobbo tends to be used as a noun, whereas bogan can also be used adjectivally to describe objects pertaining to people who are bogans. Regional variations include "Bevan" in and around Brisbane, and "Boonah" around Canberra. It's usually an uncultured person with vulgar behavior, speech, clothing, etc.
• Cooker – a derogatory term for conspiracy theorist;[6] according to the National Dictionary Centre, "a derogatory term for a person involved in protests against vaccine mandates, lockdowns and a range of other issues perceived to be infringing on personal freedom". Emerging during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, the word made the shortlist for "Word of the Year" in 2022.[7] The term is also loosely associated with the far right.[8][9] An explanation of the term given by an Australian in answer to a question on Twitter is that "It refers to soneone(sic) whose brain has been cooked by overexposure to conspiracy theories and unhinged online rhetoric".[10] Former Australian tennis player Pat Cash and former American surfer Kelly Slater were labelled cookers after they exchanged views on Twitter about the concept of the 15-minute city.[11]
• Didgeridoo is a wind instrument that was originally found only in Arnhem Land in northern Australia. It is a long, wooden, tubular instrument that produces a low-pitched, resonant sound with complex, rhythmic patterns but little tonal variation.[4]
• Digger – an Australian soldier. The term was applied during the First World War to Australian and New Zealand soldiers because so much of their time was spent digging trenches. An earlier Australian sense of digger was "a miner digging for gold". Billy Hughes, prime minister during the First World War, was known as the Little Digger. First recorded in this sense 1916.[4][12]
• Dinkum or fair dinkum – "true", "the truth", "speaking the truth", "authentic" and related meanings, depending on context and inflection. The Evening News (Sydney, NSW) 23 August 1879 has one of the earliest references to fair dinkum.[13] It originated with a now-extinct dialect word from the East Midlands in England, where dinkum (or dincum) meant "hard work" or "fair work", which was also the original meaning in Australian English.[14]
• Dunny – a privy, toilet or lavatory (from British dunnekin).[4] To many Australians "bathroom" is a room with a bath or shower.
• Fair go – a reasonable chance, a fair deal. Australia often sees itself as an egalitarian society, the land of the fair go, where all citizens have a right to fair treatment.[4][12]
• Jackaroo – a type of agricultural worker.[4]
• Nasho (plural nashos) – a person undergoing National Service, mandatory military service in Australia.[15][16] The word is often used for Vietnam War soldiers when conscription became controversial. Since that time, conscription has not been implemented in Australia.[17]
• Nork – a female breast (usually in plural); etymology disputed, but has been linked to Norco, a NSW milk company.[18]
• Outback – a "remote, sparsely-populated area".[4]

Many such words, phrases or usages originated with British and Irish settlers to Australia from the 1780s until the present. For example: a creek in Australia (as in North America), is any "stream or small river", whereas in England it is a small watercourse flowing into the sea; paddock is the Australian word for "field", while in England it is a small enclosure for livestock. Bush (as in North America) or scrub means "wooded areas" or "country areas in general" in Australia, while in England they are commonly used only in proper names (such as Shepherd's Bush and Wormwood Scrubs). Australian English and several British English dialects (e.g., Cockney, Scouse, Geordie) use the word mate to mean a friend, rather than the conventional meaning of "a spouse", although this usage has also become common in some other varieties of English.

• Billy – a tin or enamel cooking pot with a lid and wire handle, used outdoors, especially for making tea. It comes from the Scottish dialect word billy meaning "cooking utensil".[4]
• Fair dinkum – reliable; genuine; honest; true, comes from British dialect. The phrase is recorded in a north Lincolnshire dialect for the first time meaning "fair play" or "fair dealing", although "dinkum" on its own had been used in Derbyshire and Lincolnshire, meaning "work" or "punishment".[20] "Fair dinkum" was first used in England in 1881, and is the equivalent of West Yorkshire "fair doos". The word "dinkum" is first recorded in Australia in the 1890s.[21]
• G'day – a greeting, meaning "good day".[12][22]
• Manchester (frequently lower-case) – household linen (sheets, pillow cases etc.), as in "manchester department" of a department store. From "Manchester wares" with exactly the same meaning.[23]
• Sheila –slang for "woman", derived from the Irish girls' name Síle (IPA: [ˈʃiːlʲə], anglicised Sheila).
• Yobbo – an Australian variation on the UK slang yob, meaning someone who is loud, rude and obnoxious, behaves badly, anti-social, and frequently drunk (and prefixed by "drunken").

Rhyming slang is more common in older generations though modern examples exist amongst some social groupings. It is similar, and in some cases identical, to Cockney rhyming slang, for example plates (of meat) for "feet" and china (plate) for "mate". Some specifically Australian examples are dead horse for "sauce",[24] Jack Holt for "salt" (one famous Jack Holt was a horse trainer, another a boxing promoter), Barry Crocker for "shocker" (Crocker is a well-known entertainer).[25] Chunder for "vomit" most likely comes from Chunder Loo = "spew" ("Chunder Loo of Akim Foo" was a Norman Lindsay character; "spew" is synonym for "vomit").[26][27] See.[28]

Australian English vocabulary draws heavily on diminutives and abbreviations. These may be confusing to foreign speakers when they are used in everyday conversations.

There are over 5,000 identified diminutives in use. While other English dialects use diminutives in a similar way, none are so prolific or diverse. A large number of these are widely recognised and used by Australian English speakers. However, many are used only by specific demographic groups or in localised areas. Researchers are now beginning to study what psychological motivations cause Australians to abbreviate so many words.[29]

Numerous idiomatic phrases occur in Australian usage, some more historical than contemporary in usage.

Send her down, Hughie is an example of surfie slang. Australian Football League spectators use the term "white maggot" (derived from their formerly white uniforms) towards umpires at games.[30]

Amber is generic term for any beer (lager/stout/ale) in general, but especially cold and on-tap.

Not only has there been a wide variety of measures in which beer is served in pubs in Australia, the names of these glasses differ from one area to another. However, the range of glasses has declined greatly in recent years.

Prior to decimalization, Australian monetary units closely reflected British usage: four farthings (obsolete by 1945) or two halfpence to a penny; 12 pence to a shilling; 20 shillings to a pound, but terms for the coinage were uniquely Australian, particularly among working-class adult males: "Brown": a penny (1d.); "Tray": threepence (3d.); "Zac": sixpence (6d.); "Bob" or "Deener": a shilling (1s.); "Two bob bit": a florin (2s.)

Slang terms for notes mostly followed British usage: "Ten bob note": ten shillings (10s.); "Quid" (or "fiddly did"): pound note (£1); "Fiver": five pound note (£5); "Tenner" or "Brick": ten pound note (£10). Other terms have been recorded[31] but rarely used outside the racetrack. One confusing matter is that five shillings prior to decimal currency was called a "Dollar", in reference to the Spanish Dollar and "Holey Dollar" which circulated at a value of five shillings, but the Australian Dollar at the introduction of decimal currency was fixed at 10 shillings.

Where British and American vocabulary differs, Australians sometimes favour a usage different from both varieties, as with footpath (for US sidewalk, UK pavement), capsicum (for US bell pepper, UK green/red pepper), or doona (for US comforter, UK duvet) from a trademarked brand. In other instances, it either shares a term with American English, as with truck (UK: lorry) or eggplant (UK: aubergine), or with British English, as with mobile phone (US: cell phone) or bonnet (US: hood).

Terms shared by British and American English but not so commonly found in Australian English include (Australian usage in bold): abroad (overseas); cooler/ice box (Esky); flip-flops (thongs); pickup truck (ute); wildfire (bushfire).

Australian English is particularly divergent from other varieties with respect to geographical terminology, due to the country's unique geography. This is particularly true when comparing with British English, due to that country's dramatically different geography. British geographical terms not in common use in Australia include (Australian usage in bold): coppice (cleared bushland); dell (valley); fen (swamp); heath (shrubland); meadow (grassy plain); moor (swampland); spinney (shrubland); stream (creek); woods (bush) and village (even the smallest settlements in Australia are called towns or stations).

In addition, a number of words in Australian English have different meanings from those ascribed in other varieties of English. Clothing-related examples are notable. Pants in Australian English follows American usage in reference to British English trousers but in British English refer to Australian English underpants; vest in Australian English pass also in American refers to British English waistcoat but in British English refers to Australian English singlet. Thong in both American and British English refers to underwear (known in Australia as a G-string), while in Australian English it refers to British and American English flip-flop (footwear). There are numerous other examples, including biscuit which refers in Australian and British English to what in American English is cookie or cracker but to a savoury cake in American English (though cookie is often used for American-styled biscuits such as chocolate chip cookies); Asian, which in Australian and American English commonly refers to people of East Asian heritage, as opposed to British English, in which it commonly refers to people of South Asian descent; (potato) chips which refers both to British English crisps (which is not used in Australian English) and to American English French fries (which is used alongside hot chips); and football, which in Australian English refers to Australian rules football, Rugby league or Rugby union – what British refer to as football is referred to as soccer and what Americans term football is referred to as gridiron.

In addition to the large number of uniquely Australian idioms in common use, there are instances of idioms taking differing forms in the various Anglophone nations, for example (Australian usage in bold): Home away from home, take with a grain of salt and wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole (which in British English take the respective forms home from home, take with a pinch of salt and wouldn't touch with a barge pole), or a drop in the ocean and touch wood (which in American English take the forms a drop in the bucket and knock on wood).

• Australian English
• Australian comedy
• Diminutives in Australian English
• List of English words of Australian Aboriginal origin
• List of Australian place names of Aboriginal origin
• List of Australian plants termed "native"
• Strine

• Hornadge, Bill.(1989) The Australian slanguage: a look at what we say and how we say it (foreword by Spike Milligan). Richmond, Vic: Mandarin ISBN 1-86330-010-4

Look up Appendix:Australian English vocabulary in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Aussie English, The Illustrated Dictionary of Australian English
• Macquarie Dictionary