A wee juggler is a slang name for the Major Mitchell, a cockatoo with white wings, pink underparts, neck and face, and white crown suffused with salmon pink and forward-curving scarlet crest...

Put on your daggiest duds because we are exploring all things daggy in this week's Aussie Word of the Week...

You may remember a few weeks ago when we featured wombat-headed as our Aussie Word of the Week. Well this week we have another great Aussie insult. Pie-eater...

Prawn has been a part of Australian slang since the 1890s, to call someone a prawn is to call them a fool or jerk...

The baggy green is the cap worn by Australian test cricket players. It is traditionally presented to players before their debut test match, the baggy green has a long and storied history. Sometimes switched to green baggy, this cap has been worn and cherished by players from Bradman to Steve Waugh, right up to members of the modern day men's and women's test teams.  Another item of clothing worn by cricketers includes the hector protector, a hard protective covering for the groin, worn inside the pants. Modern cricketers tend to wear a helmet to proctect them from the tomato or cherry (the ball).  Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. You can see other Aussie Word of the Week posts from the Macquarie Dictionary here.

The word deadly with its current meaning was originally coined in the 1900s. It was then adopted into Aboriginal English in the 1970s and from then into general use. Excellent, fantastic, cool: That movie was deadly! It is also used as an adverb, as in: he sang deadly. Interestingly, deadly is also used in Ireland with the same positive meaning. Where you hear the lyrical tones of the many Irish migrants to Australia, a shout of deadly won't be far behind. There is also the term for a bicycle in Australia dating from the 1960s, deadly treadly, though the origin of this term is unknown. In Australia, there are also the well-known Deadly Awards, which are annual awards made in Australia recognising excellence in music, sport, entertainment, and community achievement among Indigenous Australians; established in 1995. Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. You can see other Aussie Word of the Week posts from the Macquarie Dictionary here.

Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. This week we look at wombat-headed. Meaning dull, stupid or block-headed, wombat-headed is a great Aussie insult originating from Ned Kelly's famous 1879 Jerilderie letter. 

Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. A barney is an argument or a fight. It is thought to have come across from a British dialect, though it isn't certain how exactly it came to be. The word is also part of Polari, a slang language popular in British theatrical and comedy circles, particularly gay circles,

Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. This week we look at yakka. The word yakka means hard work, especially manual labour. This has been Australian slang since the 1880s but is one of many words we have in Australian English to originate from an Aboriginal language.

Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. This week we look at boomer. There are a lot of very different meanings for the word boomer in colloquial Australian English. The most common is as something large, like a crashing wave. But it is also popularly known to mean something successful or popular, as a party or song. A newer reference, unrelated to these two, is simply as the shortened version of baby boomer.

There are many names for this stalwart feature of an Australian childhood. Running barefoot across the grass is almost guaranteed to result in a bindi-eye in the sole of your foot. The bindi-eye is originally native to South America and was introduced to Australia in the early 20th century. Now known all over the country as a common lawn weed, it flowers in spring and produces small, flat, brown, seeds with sharp spines which stick painfully into bare feet. The name bindi-eye comes from the Australian Aboriginal languages of Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay. However, a bindayaa originally referred to any of a number of plants of the genus Calotis which have small burrs with fine barbed awns. It has since been applied to a wider variety of plants. It also has a number of different colloquial references. In the Newcastle region, it is known as a joey. And in parts of Western Australia, it is known as a jo-jo. Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. You can see other Aussie Word of the Week posts from the Macquarie Dictionary here.

Anyone who lives near a beach might have seen a group of junior lifesavers, also known as nippers. There are a number of meanings for this word, but no clear etymology listed. An interesting and very likely now very much illegal meaning was a 'young lad on a construction site or in a mine who did small odd jobs, such as making tea and buying lunch.' We would love to hear from any nippers of any kind out there. Is this a common term where you come from? Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. You can see other Aussie Word of the Week posts from the Macquarie Dictionary here.