Australian English vocabulary


is a major variety of the English language spoken throughout Australia. Most of the vocabulary of Australian English is shared with British English, though there are notable differences. The vocabulary of Australia is drawn from many sources, including various dialects of British English as well as Gaelic languages, some Indigenous Australian languages, and Polynesian languages.
One of the first dictionaries of Australian slang was Karl Lentzner's Dictionary of the Slang-English of Australia and of Some Mixed Languages in 1892. The first dictionary based on historical principles that covered Australian English was E. E. Morris's Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages. In 1981, the more comprehensive Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English was published. Oxford University Press published the Australian Oxford Dictionary in 1999, in concert with the Australian National University. Oxford University Press also published The Australian National Dictionary.
Broad and colourful Australian English has been popularised over the years by 'larrikin' characters created by Australian performers such as Chips Rafferty, John Meillon, Paul Hogan, Barry Humphries, Greig Pickhaver and John Doyle, Michael Caton, Steve Irwin, Jane Turner and Gina Riley. It has been claimed that, in recent times, the popularity of the Barry McKenzie character, played on screen by Barry Crocker, and in particular of the soap opera Neighbours, led to a "huge shift in the attitude towards Australian English in the UK", with such phrases as "chunder", "liquid laugh" and "technicolour yawn" all becoming well known as a result.

Words of Australian origin

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 : "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".
  • 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.
  • Bogan – an Australian term for describing someone who may be a yobbo. 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 "Booner" around Canberra. It's usually an uncultured person with vulgar behavior, speech, clothing, etc.
  • Cooker – a derogatory term for conspiracy theorist; according to the National Dictionary Centre, "a derogatory term for a person involved in protests against vaccine mandates, government 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. The term is also loosely associated with the far right. An explanation of the term given by an Australian in answer to a question on Twitter is that "It refers to whose brain has been cooked by overexposure to conspiracy theories and unhinged online rhetoric".
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Dinkum or fair dinkum – "true", "the truth", "speaking the truth", "authentic" and related meanings, depending on context and inflection. The Evening News 23 August 1879 has one of the earliest references to fair dinkum. It originated with a now-extinct dialect word from the East Midlands in England, where dinkum meant "hard work" or "fair work", which was also the original meaning in Australian English.
  • Dunny – a privy, toilet or lavatory. 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.
  • Grogan - the product of a bowel movement.
  • Jackaroo – a type of agricultural worker.
  • Nasho – a person undergoing National Service, mandatory military service in Australia. The word is often used for Vietnam War soldiers when conscription became controversial. Since that time, conscription has not been implemented in Australia.
  • Nork – a female breast ; etymology disputed, but has been linked to Norco, a NSW milk company.
  • Outback – a "remote, sparsely-populated area".

    Words of Australian Aboriginal origin

Some elements of Aboriginal languages have been incorporated into Australian English, mainly as names for flora and fauna.
Some examples are cooee and yakka. The former is a high-pitched call which travels long distances and is used to attract attention, which has been derived from Dharug, an Aboriginal language spoken in the Sydney region. Cooee has also become a notional distance: if he's within cooee, we'll spot him. Yakka means work, strenuous labour, and comes from 'yaga' meaning 'work' in the Yagara indigenous language of the Brisbane region. Yakka found its way into nineteenth-century Australian pidgin, and then passed into Australian English. First recorded 1847.
Boomerang is an Australian word which has moved into International English. It was also borrowed from Dharug.

Words of British, Irish or American origin

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, 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 or scrub means "wooded areas" or "country areas in general" in Australia, while in England they are commonly used only in proper names. Australian English and several British English dialects 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".
  • 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". "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.
  • G'day – a greeting, meaning "good day".
  • Manchester – household linen, as in "manchester department" of a department store. From "Manchester wares" with exactly the same meaning.
  • Sheila – slang for "woman", derived from the feminine Irish given name Síle, commonly 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.

    Rhyming slang

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 for "feet" and china for "mate". Some specifically Australian examples are dead horse for "sauce", Jack Holt for "salt", Barry Crocker for "shocker". as well as do a Harold Holt meaning "to do a bolt". Chunder for "vomit" most likely comes from Chunder Loo = "spew". See.

Diminutives and abbreviations

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.

Colloquial phrases

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" towards umpires at games.

Alcohol

Amber is generic term for any beer 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.