Author Archives: Mark Gwynn

Shaggledick – Mountweazel or ‘dictionary word’?

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by Mark Gwynn

A recent contribution to the ANDC Word Box was the word shaggledick.* The contributor provided two dictionary references for this word and suggested that it may be a ‘Mountweazel’ word. A Mountweazel is a fictitious entry deliberately added to a reference work. The term was coined by the New Yorker magazine and named after a fictitious entry for one Lillian Virginia Mountweazel in the New Columbia Encyclopedia (1975 edition). According to one of the editors: ‘It was an old tradition in encyclopedias to put in a fake entry to protect your copyright… If someone copied Lillian, then we’d know they’d stolen from us’ (New Yorker, 29 August 2005).

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‘The Man from Snowy River’ and Australian English

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by Mark Gwynn

There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away.
And had joined the wild bush horses – he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
(opening lines of ‘The Man from Snowy River’, 1890)

Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson’s poems and his use of the Australian vernacular have endeared him to generations of Australians. In the Australian National Dictionary (a dictionary of Australian English using quotations to provide evidence of how words are used over time) Paterson is quoted 78 times. His poems provide valuable evidence of 19th and early 20th century Australian English—particularly the language of the Australian bush. In this blog I will look closely at some of the Australianisms found in ‘The Man from Snowy River’.

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Australia: Our home is girt by sea

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by Mark Gwynn

Since the adoption of ‘Advance Australia Fair’ as Australia’s national anthem there have been a number of vocal critics. Some of these critics are nostalgic for the former anthem ‘God Save the Queen’, others prefer the unofficial anthem ‘Waltzing Matilda’, while others are uninspired by the tune and lyrics. In this blog I will look at one very particular criticism – the retention of the word girt. The word is archaic and rare in other Englishes but thanks to the anthem Australians know it well.

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Canberra Word: booner

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by Mark Gwynn

This year the Australian National Dictionary Centre is showcasing Canberra words to mark the city’s centenary. The first Canberra Word blog discussed pube, a colloquial word for ‘public servant’.  This blog, the second in the series, looks at the word booner, a local word meaning ‘bogan‘.

Many readers will be familiar with the Australian word bogan. A bogan is a person who is regarded as being uncultured or unsophisticated. There are a number of regional terms across Australia for this type of person. One of the earliest examples of this kind of word is westie. A westie is used to describe a person from the western suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne. Other states provide us with the words bevan (Queensland), bog (Western Australia), and chigga (Tasmania), to name just a few. Like bogan, all these words carry an underlying judgment – that people from working-class or low socio-economic backgrounds are uncultured, crass, and unsophisticated.

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Words from our Word Box: update 2

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Click on the logo to go to the Word Box page

by the ANDC team

This is the second instalment in our regular updates about contributions made to the Australian National Dictionary Centre’s Word Box. We invite members of the public to alert us to words and phrases that are either new to them or used in an unfamiliar way by submitting them to our Word Box. These contributions allow our editors to identify new material both for our general Australian Oxford dictionaries and for our archive of Australian words, and to share these findings with you. We thank everyone for their submissions and encourage you to contribute to Word Box – just click on the Word Box image to post your word. A few of the more interesting contributions from the last three months are discussed below. Some we have come across previously, and some are new to us. We welcome any comments about your understanding or experience of these words.

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Sharks and Australian English

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Shark warning sign on Western Australian beach after fatal attack in 2012

Each year the Australian summer brings news stories of shark sightings close to shore, shark attacks, and the inevitable debate about how to protect beachgoers from such attacks. Australia, as an island continent with the bulk of its population inhabiting the coastal areas, has had a long relationship with sharks. This relationship is reflected in our culture and expressed by a number of terms in Australian English.*

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The evolution of a word–the case of ‘Kylie’

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Kylie Minogue

by Mark Gwynn

The word kylie in Australian English has a long history. It comes from ‘garli’, a word meaning ‘boomerang’ in Nyungar, the language of south-western Western Australia, and also in a number of other western and central Australian languages. Kylie, used chiefly in Western Australia, was first recorded in an English context in the 1830s:

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Schoolies and schoolies week

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by Mark Gwynn

Over the coming weeks the Australian tradition of schoolies week will be observed across the country. This is a period of post-examination celebration marking the end of secondary schooling for Year 12 students (schoolies). While these celebrations occur in various locations across Australia they are usually associated with students going to the Gold Coast in Queensland. In Australian English the word schoolie has a longer history than many people may realise.

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Words from our Word Box: update 1

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Click on the logo to go to the Word Box page

By  the ANDC team

Regular readers of our blog will know that at the Australian National Dictionary Centre we recently initiated a new feature on our website called Word Box. This feature enables members of the public to submit words that are either new to them or used in an unfamiliar way. Word Box is alerting us to new words and meanings that may be used in updating our general dictionaries, or included in our collection of Australian words. The team at the ANDC would like to thank all those who have already contributed to Word Box, and we encourage everyone to participate. Here are a few of the more interesting contributions. Continue reading →