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Straight to the Poolroom with These Australian Idioms • Amanda Laugesen Straight to the Poolroom with These Australian Idioms • Amanda Laugesen

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Straight to the Poolroom with These Australian Idioms • Amanda Laugesen Straight to the Poolroom with These Australian Idioms • Amanda Laugesen IN THIS ISSUE: • AMANDA LAUGESEN DISCUSSES SOME AUSTRALIAN IDIOMS • JULIA MILLER LOOKS AT ‘MAD’ AND ‘CRAZY’ IDIOMS • MARK GWYNN TELLS THE STORY OF ‘UP IN ANNIE’S ROOM’ PUBLISHED TWICE A YEAR • APRIL 2016 • VOLUME 25 • NO. 1 words. of new list tops ‘Binge-watch’ EDITORIAL STRAIGHT TO THE @ozworders @ozworders We have devoted this issue of Ozwords to a POOLROOM WITH THESE variety of articles on idioms. To celebrate the ANDC forthcoming publication of the second edition of our dictionary on historical principles, The AUSTRALIAN IDIOMS Australian National Dictionary, I have written an article discussing some of the many new AMANDA LAUGESEN Australian English expressions and idioms we are including. The new edition includes The second edition of the Australian National Dictionary (hereafter referred to as AND many more idioms than the first edition, 2e) will be published later this year. This new edition includes many new words and and highlights an important element of the idioms. Some of these are words and expressions that have come into usage since the Australian vernacular. publication of the first edition in 1988; others are those we have since discovered or found more evidence for. Idioms are a highly colloquial aspect of our vocabulary, often Dr Julia Miller has contributed an article reflecting Australian attitudes and values, and they have been given a greater emphasis outlining an aspect of her research into in the dictionary this time around. In this article, I would like to highlight a selection of idioms. Her research looks at both British the idioms and expressions that we are including in the second edition of our dictionary and Australian idioms, and in her article on historical principles. she discusses some of the various idioms Over its history, Australian English has developed a variety of idioms, some of which relating to the forms ‘as mad as’ and ‘as we use a lot. Chucking a sickie, or describing someone as being like a stunned mullet, form crazy as’. In his piece, Mark Gwynn focuses part of our vernacular. Other idioms and expressions are now dated and either forgotten on just one idiom – but one with a fascinating or only vaguely known: we rarely describe someone as being as silly as a rabbit or curse story: up in Annie’s room. The origins of this someone with may your chooks turn into emus and kick your dunny down. Yet all of these expression are unclear, but Mark reveals its expressions make up the colourful and fascinating history of Australian English recorded likely beginnings in a military context. in our forthcoming dictionary. Our competition, as ever, proved to be A number of the new expressions in AND 2e have links to politics, many being coined by a politician. For example, keep the bastards honest is a well-known slogan uttered by popular and we enjoyed reading the many word. a new invented CSIRO how The smell of rain: entries that came in. There were also many Don Chipp (1925–2006), leader of the Australian Democrats, in 1980. He was alluding fascinating contributions to our Mailbag. to the party’s role in holding the balance of power in the Senate. The phrase has since We look forward to receiving the next lot entered popular usage in a transferred sense, although it is still largely used in a political of competition entries, and contributions context. Another expression coined by a politician, in this case Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, is life wasn’t meant to be easy. A different kind of contribution to Australian English @ozworders to Mailbag. We also hope you will send us comes from Prime Minister Harold Holt, whose mysterious disappearance in 1967 led some of the expressions you are familiar to the development of the rhyming slang phrase to do a Harold (Holt), ‘to do a bolt’, first with, especially ones that are variants of ANDC recorded in 1984. those discussed in this issue. Popular culture and literature have also contributed to our range of Australian idioms. Amanda Laugesen For example, the Australian film The Castle (1997) has given us the expression straight to Director the pool room, ‘a catchphrase used to express the great value of a gift or prize’. The comic strip character Flash Gordon, published in Australia with the name Speed Gordon, is the origin of the expression in more trouble than Speed Gordon, first recorded in 1944. The Check out our blog: chocolate bar Violet Crumble has given us the expression that’s the way the violet crumbles (first www.ozwords.org recorded 1988). On a more literary note, Xavier Herbert’s novel Poor Fellow My Country (1975) popularised the title as an expression of deprivation and loss. The phrase has its Like us on Facebook: origins in Australian Pidgin. And the refrain in John O’Brien’s poem ‘Said Hanrahan’ www.facebook.com/ozwords (1921)—we’ll all be rooned—is surely the ultimate expression of pessimism. Unsurprisingly, sport is the source of numerous Australian English expressions and Follow us on Twitter: idioms. To do a Bradbury, ‘to be the unlikely winner of an event; to win an event coming @ozworders from well behind’, is one of the most recent sporting-derived idioms in Australian English. It refers to Steven Bradbury, an Australian speed skater who won a gold medal at the found a new word? 2002 Winter Olympics after all his opponents were involved in a pile-up during the 1000 andc.anu.edu.au/webform/word-box CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL DICTIONARY CENTRE A JOINT VENTURE BETWEEN THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY & Fool, buffoon, wazzock: UK MPs debate Trump ban. Trump debate UK MPs wazzock: buffoon, Fool, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS DICT_OZWORDS_APR2016_4pp.indd 1 8/04/2016 3:10 pm @ozworders @ozworders ANDC STRAIGHT TO THE POOLROOM WITH THESE AUSTRALIAN IDIOMS • AMANDA LAUGESEN STRAIGHT TO THE POOLROOM WITH THESE AUSTRALIAN IDIOMS • AMANDA LAUGESEN metres event. Wally Grout is rhyming slang for ‘shout’; Wally Grout was an Australian test wicketkeeper (1957–66). Although undoubtedly in use earlier, this bit of rhyming slang is first found in print only in 1988. A number of idioms refer to the harsh Australian environment, some of which have a long history in Australian English but weren’t included in the first edition of AND. They include where the crows fly backwards (to keep the dust out of their eyes) (first recorded 1899) and wet enough to bog a duck (first recorded 1948). Australian idioms also include , the January Word of the Month. , the January Word a number that are derogatory or offensive, and that speak to some of the less flattering aspects of Australian society and history: I must have killed a Chinaman, used to refer to bad luck (first recorded 1893); as full as a Pommy complaint box, ‘very full; very drunk’ (first recorded 1985); and wouldn’t serve it to a Jap on Anzac Day, used to designate something that is unacceptable in the extreme (first recorded 1976). Australian tea A characteristic Australian bluntness is often in evidence. An ugly person might be described as having a head like a robber’s dog (first recorded 1946) or being as ugly as a hatful of arseholes (also US, but chiefly Australian, and first recorded in 1957). If you’re thirsty, you could describe yourself as being as dry as a kookaburra’s Khyber (first recorded 1971), and something unpopular or offensive might be described as being off like a bucket of prawns (first recorded 1981). Someone who is incompetent might be the target of the disparaging but inventive couldn’t train a choko vine over a country dunny (first recorded 1981). A concern with laziness also seems to have prompted the creation of a number of A characteristic Explore the origins of Explore idioms—whether this is indicative of a national propensity to avoid hard work is not for us to judge! These expressions include: wouldn’t work in an iron lung (first recorded 1971); Australian Australia as the land of the long weekend (first recorded 1966); to be on a good lurk, ‘to have an easy job; to be engaged in a profitable enterprise’ (first recorded 1906); and of course bluntness is Australians are notorious for their willingness to chuck a sickie (first recorded 1988). @ozworders @ozworders Australian English also includes a range of idioms referring to people variously often in evidence. considered to be eccentric, stupid, or very angry. Julia Miller discusses some of these on p. 7 of this edition. In addition to the many expressions Julia has collected relating to ANDC the forms ‘as mad as’ and ‘as crazy as’, we include the following expressions in AND 2e: to chuck a wobbly (first recorded 1986); to be a stubby short of a six-pack (and variants); mad as a gumtree full of galahs (first recorded 1941); to chuck a mental (first recorded 1979); short of a sheet of bark (first recorded 1885); to chuck a berko (first recorded 1995); and to be not the full dollar (first recorded 1976). As can be seen from this list, which is not exhaustive, the form ‘to chuck a …’ is also commonly found in Australian English. A variety of animals inspire Australian idioms, most commonly dingos, crows, chooks, and dogs. But the most ‘productive’ animal for Australian English is surely the bandicoot, an insect-eating Australian marsupial. In AND 2e, we record that one can be as bald, hungry, lonely, lousy, miserable, poor, silly, and crazy as a bandicoot. What did the poor bandicoot do to deserve such a stigma? Perhaps the bandicoot’s long face suggested why he might be miserable or lonely, but some have speculated that we just like the sound of the word ‘bandicoot’.
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