Australian Slang: A Dictionary

Welcome to Australian Slang, a richly-textured, often ribald world of laconic humour. This dictionary is a work-in-progress now in its 4th edition that aims to do three things; (a) help the traveller to decipher some of what they hear Australians saying, (b) give the casual reader some insight if not amusement at how we Aussies think and speak, and (c) record for posterity the many expressions that are slipping into disuse in the 21st Century.

Along with the home-grown expressions, readers will recognize both British and American expressions in this dictionary. Australian English has absorbed much from America and Britain over the years.

For depth of knowledge and skill at using their own language, no-one beats the British. They invented the language after all. From its origins as an obscure West Germanic dialect and a thousand years in the making, the English language is the very soul of what it is to be English.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, American English has over many years acquired a creative momentum that recognizes no boundaries. Americans have taken a good all-purpose language from the British and extended it to describe their dynamically changing culture. They do not cling to old forms out of respect for tradition as the British do. Anything is fair game.

The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw famously observed that Britain and America (are) two great nations divided by the same language. The quote is also attributed to Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill. Being a witty truism, people are bound to pick it up and use it in every day conversation. If it’s funny and true, the saying will spread and become established. That is no less the case with Australian slang.

Australian English has of course gone its own way. Take an ancient Saxon dialect, cultivate it for centuries in the pleasant green countryside of England, then uproot and transplant it to a far-off land where the countryside and wildlife are very different from the old country. Expose it to the baking sun and driving rain for a couple of centuries until you are left with something like weathered wood, tough, richly textured and beautiful in its rugged way. Australian English is as much an expression of an ancient landscape as it is a dialect of the convicts and early settlers who came to Australia.