New Aussie additions to English

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shanghaiceltic

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Posted: Jan 11, 2008 - 11:05 AM
Post subject: New Aussie additions to English

Australians add new words to dictionary

By Nick Squires In Sydney
Last Updated: 2:47am GMT 11/01/2008

They gave the world budgie smugglers, sanger, arvo and barbie*, but Australians have shown themselves to be endlessly inventive, with a new collection of words and phrases added to the rich repository of Strine.
# A salad dodger with man flu: Aussie dictionary

The country’s biggest online dictionary, Macquarie, has included the 85 words or phrases in its latest online edition and wants Australians to vote for the one they consider most influential or apposite.

They are grouped in 17 categories, from business to travel, and include ‘toad juice’ - a foul-smelling liquid fertiliser produced from pulverizing cane toads, pests which are devastating native wildlife as they hop their way across the continent’s tropical north.

It is said to be especially good on banana and papaya trees.

Many of the new words invented, or adopted, by Australians reflect a growing concern for the environment.

The ‘green shoe brigade’ describes people who are profiting from dubious practices conducted in the name of caring for the environment - an adaptation of ‘white shoe brigade’, unscrupulous developers who encased much of Queensland’s coast in concrete in the 1980s.

‘Climate canary’ is a geographical feature, plant or animal species pointing to climate change.

Some of the new terms come from New Zealand. Kiwis have taken to jokingly calling their capital, Wellington, ‘Helengrad’ because of the iron grip exerted by the government of prime minister Helen Clark.

Many of the words were first formulated in the United States, but have been enthusiastically adopted by Australians, including ‘tanorexia’ – the obsessive cultivating of a suntan – and ‘salad dodger’, an obese person.
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A tattoo just above the buttocks is referred to as a pair of ‘arse antlers’ - "having a central section and curving extensions on each side” - while ‘manscaping’ is the removal of men’s body hair for aesthetic reasons.

A person trying to juggle personal debt is a ‘credit card tart’, shifting loans around from one card to pay for another.

Other nominations for the online Macquarie Dictionary include ‘infomania’, for those who constantly put aside the job at hand to concentrate on incoming email and text messages.

‘Password fatigue’ is frustration at having too many passwords to remember.

But overcoming it brings the danger of ‘data smog’ - "electronic information as by emails, internet searches, etc., which, by its volume, impairs performance and increases stress."

‘Slummy mummies’ are mothers of young children who have abandoned all care for their personal appearance, as opposed to immaculately-groomed yummy mummies.

“One of my personal favourites is ‘boomeritis’, which describes the sports-related injuries suffered by baby boomers as they keep playing sports well into old age,” said Susan Butler, the dictionary's publisher.

“We invite the public to vote on their favourite word or phrase because it gives us some idea of what they consider the most inventive or significant or humorous addition to the language.

“Last year’s winner was muffin top [the band of skin sagging over a too-tight pair of trousers], which was an Australian coinage that became big in America.”

Voting for a favourite word on macquariedictionary.com.au will close on January 31, with the “word of the year” announced in early February.

* swimming trunks, sausage, afternoon and barbecue

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