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
It’s the start of May, so here’s your monthly helping of new words that may enter the Macquarie Dictionary! Up first is a new word from the internet that has already been circulating in the media: goblin mode, a pattern of behaviour characterised by an embrace of indolence and slovenliness. It is apparently epitomised by … Read more
This week’s blog is a bit rough around the edges. Do you know a roughie? That is, a rude or crude person. I’m sure we’ve all been a roughie at times. Another definition of roughie is a swindle or shrewd trick, as in, he put a roughie over Bill yesterday. Perhaps because of the convict roots of Modern Australia, Australian English contains … Read more
Take the next left and the next, and another left after that. This week we’re doing blockies: a single circuit of a vehicle around a street block, usually doing only left hand turns. As one contributor to the Australian Word Map put it, to do a blockie means, ‘to go round the block very fast in a usually noisy car, often … Read more
