Oxford Australia Blog

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Tag: Australian Words

  • Word of the Month—February: green nomad

    green nomad noun: a person whose travels within Australia are motivated by a concern for the environment. In the Bournda Environmental Education Centre’s 42nd World Environment Day Dinner, held in Tathra, New South Wales, a suggestion was made to the key speaker: … a re-branding of grey nomads to ‘green nomads’, [thereby] encouraging older travellers…

  • Spanner crabs, platform 27, and a one-duck duck farm

    We had some interesting and entertaining correspondence from readers in response to our articles on Australian idioms in the last issue. In her article, Julia Miller was puzzled about the logic of the idiom mad as a box of spanners, asking ‘how can an inanimate spanner be angry or crazy?’ One reader, C. Roe (Qld),…

  • Where is Annie’s room?

    In this article, reproduced from our latest issue of Ozwords, Mark Gwynn investigates the questionable etymology of the Australian phrase up in Annie’s room. In Australian English the term Annie’s room refers to an unknown, mythical, or unspecified place. It is chiefly used in the phrase up in Annie’s room, a facetious reply you may give to…

  • The long and the short of it

    In this article, reproduced from our latest issue of Ozwords, Julia Robinson investigates Aussie terms for Chinese wonton soup and Chinese noodle soup. Recently we received this query from a Victorian reader: ‘I am writing to ask about the term “short soup”, as in the Chinese wonton soup. Other non-Australian speakers of English are unaware…

  • Aussie terms we didn’t realise were Australian

    Oxford Dictionaries recently announced the largest ever quarterly update of Australian English on OxfordDictionaries.com, with over 500 entries added to the free online dictionary of English. These aren’t new terms; they have been added because they represent a historical and cultural breadth of the use of English in Australia. It certainly has been an education…

  • Aboriginal words and terms added to Oxforddictionaries.com

    Oxford Dictionaries recently announced the largest ever quarterly update of Australian English on OxfordDictionaries.com, with over 500 entries added to the free online dictionary of English. This update included a selection of Aboriginal words and terms relating to Aboriginal culture. The words in this update recognise the complex role of Aboriginal language in Australian English….