macquarie

You’re lower than a snake’s belly! If someone tosses this insult your way, they are calling you mean, despicable and contemptible. Gee, thanks. At the Macquarie Dictionary we are welled versed in Aussie insults. This isn’t the first time we have explored barbs on our blog. So strap yourselves in for another round of great Aussie insults. Mongrel is a … Read more

Australians love brevity. We are fond of shortening words. Perhaps the most famous example is the shortening of the Melbourne Cricket Ground to the MCG. But that wasn’t enough for Victorians, so they dropped the M and the C so the colossal stadium became simple the G.  Today we want to look at the suffix … Read more

We may be in the depths of winter, but the new words are still running hot! In fact, our first new contender is for a source of heat you don’t want to be anywhere near. It’s gigafire: a fire that burns between 100,000 and 1 million hectares. With global warming causing increasingly extreme weather events, … Read more

In recognition of Pride Month, a month of celebration that recognises LGBTIQ+ people, Macquarie Dictionary has gathered a few slang terms commonly used in queer communities. A lot of slang originates in or was popularised by American ballroom, vogue and drag culture of New York City in the 1980s. First off is the term throwing … Read more

Sit back and watch the sparks fly. This week’s word of the week is arc up. To arc up means to become upset or livid with anger, to ‘flare up’ like a welder’s torch.  We all get upset, luckily Aussie English contains a plethora of words to describe when we become angry. Does reading this blog make you … Read more

Toodle-em-buck was a game of chance played mainly by children in Victoria back in the 1920s for gambling on horseraces, especially the Melbourne Cup. The game consisted of a wooden skewer, a cotton reel, and a cardboard disc marked in sectors, each bearing a horse’s name and betting odds proportional to sector size. A pointer showed the winner when … Read more

‘Ooo I heard it through the … bush telegraph?’ Ok, so it might not fit into your beautiful karaoke rendition of Marvin Gaye but the bush telegraph is the outback rumour mill. So you can consider it the Aussie version of the grapevine: the network of personal and other contacts through which information ranging from gossip … Read more

Researching words and definitions is hard work. Punching them into the Dictionary makes me as dry as a blacksmiths apron, in other words, thirsty.  The Australian landscape can be a harsh place. So naturally we’ve invented interesting ways to say we need a drink. For example, to exclaim that a man’s not a camel! is … Read more

Welcome back to another edition of the monthly New Words blog! The first word on our list names a concept I think a lot of people will be familiar with. It’s wishcycling: putting something in the recycling without checking that it’s suitable. Packing peanuts, shopping receipts, coffee cups, soft plastics… after learning how many things … Read more

With the Macquarie staff back in the office along with thousands of other workers across Australia, we rediscovered some things we missed while working from home. This includes the Macquarie archive: several bookshelves stuffed with decades of dictionaries, manuals, slang guides and even film reels. We selected three titles from these dusty shelves to investigate … Read more