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DIRECTORY OF SAUCY SLANG
Where Did That Expression Really Come From?
Know Your Onions! A Jumble of Random Slang

THE QUEEN’S ENGLISHVICTORIAN ENGLISH AMERICAN ENGLISH ​AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH
​View Slang and Curses WordMap
A cheeky collection of all slang, insults, curses and idioms available from all categories

HAPPY LITTLE VEGEMITE
Thoughts & Feelings Slang

ATTRIBUTES AND CHARACTERISTICS
  • A wigwam for a goose’s bridle - Something absurd or preposterous; used as a snubbing or dismissive reply to an unwanted question like from an inquisitive child who asks ‘What’s in the bag?’
    • The original English idiom was a whim-wham for a goose’s bridle. WHIM-WHAM meaning 'an ornament' or ‘a trinket’ disappeared from the language in the 19th century and survived only in this phrase.
    • In Australia the meaningless whim-wham was altered to the more familiar WIGWAM (and sometimes to WING WONG).
  • ACE - Great, excellent
  • ANT’S PANTS - Something extremely impressive
  • As game as Ned Kelly - Fearless in the face of odds; foolhardy. The phrase derives from the name of Australia's most famous bushranger, who was hanged for his crimes.
  • BONZER – Good (“you’ve done a bonzer job”)
  • BOUQUET- A compliment
  • CORKER – Something excellent
  • DAGGY – Not cool (can also be used affectionately)
  • DEADEST – True
  • DEADLY – Really awesome
  • DODGY - Not quite right, suspicious
  • DRY AS… - Used in various phrases to indicate different kinds of extreme dryness, including thirst and laconic humor. In standard English we find dry as a bone from the early 19th century, but the Australian climate has contributed to a number of variants in Aussie English. The idiom can be simply descriptive, such as dry as the Simpson desert, but is often found in more elaborate forms including:
    • Dry as a dead dingos’s donger (DONGER is an Australian colloquial term for penis)
    • Dry as a kookaburra’s khyber (KHYBER comes from the rhyming slang KHYBER PASS meaning arse)
    • Dry as a pommy’s towel - (POMMY means a person from the UK, especially England.
  • Fit as a mallee bull - Very strong and healthy.
    • A mallee bull is one that lives in mallee country (poor, dry country where small scrubby eucalypt trees called mallee grow). Anything that survives in such conditions would have to be tough and fit.
    • The word MALLEE comes from the Victorian Aboriginal language Woiwurrung, but is also found in other languages.
  • FULL AS - The word full is found in various similes to designate ‘fullness’ of three main kinds: (1) being very drunk; (2) having eaten to one’s limits or satisfaction; (3) containing or holding much or many.
    • The earliest forms: full as a goog, full as a boot, full as a bull (or bull’s bum), and full as a state school (with variants such as full as a state school hat rack) have been in use since the 1930s.
    • A number of other variants emerge from the 1960s onwards, including full as a Catholic school, full as a pommy complaint box, full as the family po (from the French pronunciation of pot in chamber pot), the offensive full as a fairy’s phone book, and full as Centrelink on payday.
    • Another use of full in Australian English is found in the phrases full up to dolly’s wax and full up to pussy’s bow. These have the same meaning as the similes above: completely full, satiated. Full up to dolly’s wax (usually used in the context of having eaten one’s fill) is a reference to an old-fashioned type of doll that had a wax head attached to a cloth body. Full up to pussy’s bow is an allusion to a decorative bow on a cat’s neck.
  • FULLY SICK – Really cool
  • IFFY – Bit risky or unreasonable
  • SCHMICK - Smart, stylish; excellent.
    • Schmick (sometimes SHMICK) is a relatively new word. The form SMICK is found once in the written record in the 1970s, and may be a blend of the words smart and slick. From the late 1990s onwards smick is modified to schmick.
  • RIDGY- DIDGE - Original or genuine
  • SEACHANGE - A significant change of lifestyle, especially one achieved by moving from the city to a seaside town.
    • It comes from SeaChange, a popular Australian television series in which the principal character moves from the city to a small coastal town.
    • The name of the series itself alludes to the standard English meaning of sea-change ‘a profound or notable transformation’, which comes from the Shakespearean play “The Tempest”: “Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change, Into something rich and strange.”
    • The Australian meaning was first used in 1998, and has popularized the verb to SEACHANGE, and the name SEACHANGER to describe people who choose a seachange.
    • A later form modeled on seachange is TREE CHANGE referring to a significant change in lifestyle with a move from the city to a rural district.
  • Things are crook in Tallarook - A rhyming catchphrase used to indicate that things are bad or unpleasant.
    • Tallarook is the name of a small town in northern Victoria, and CROOK is used in the Australian sense ‘bad; inferior; unpleasant; unsatisfactory’.
    • Things are crook in Tallarook is one of several similar phrases based on rhyming reduplication, including ‘there’s no work at Bourke’, ‘got the arse at Bulli Pass’, ‘no lucre at Echuca’, and‘everything’s wrong at Wollongong’.
    • They are sometimes thought to be associated with the Great Depression of the 1930s, when unemployment meant that many people traveled long distances looking for work.
  • WONKY - Something unstable, unsteady or shaky

EXPRESSIONS & COMMUNICATION
  • BLOODY - An expression of emphasis, particularly in anger.
    • Another word for this: HEAPS.
  • BUGGER - A mild profanity that’s also one of the most versatile words in Australian English.
    • As an exclamation: Bugger! I dropped some more avo on myself!”
    • As a term of sympathy: “Look at that poor bugger with avo all over his bathers.”
    • Tired, broken or ruined: “These bathers are buggered now.”
    • An annoying thing: “These avo-stained bathers a bit of a bugger.”
    • An impolite instruction: “Bugger off and change into some clean bathers.”
  • DARDY – Meaning “cool” and is used amongst South West Australian Aboriginal peoples and adopted by non-indigenous teens.
  • EARBASHING - Talk to one person incessantly
  • FURPHY – Rumors or stories that are improbable or absurd
  • GIBBER - Talking. “Get some grog into a bogan and he’ll start gibbering.”
    • Other words for this: EAR-BASHING, CHEWING YOUR EAR OFF (in a strictly figurative sort of way) or TALKING BULL DUST
  • NO WORRIES- “No bother, no trouble” - an assurance that all is fine.
    • This colloquial version of the phrase ‘not to worry’ is very common in Australia, and also occurs in other forms such as NO WORRIES MATE and NURRIES. It implies that everything will come right, or be taken care of, and that we should all be relaxed. NO WUCKA’S – A truly Aussie way to say ‘no worries’
  • STREWTH – An exclamation of surprise
  • YOU RIGHT? Often heard as a question from a salesperson to a customer, this is the Australian version of the standard question “are you being served?”

EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS
  • As mean as cat’s piss - Mean, stingy, uncharitable
  • As miserable as a bandicoot - Extremely unhappy.
  • BIZZO – Business. “Mind your own bizzo”
  • CLUCKY - Feeling broody or maternal
  • Crack the shits – Getting angry at someone or something
    • CROOK – Being ill or angry. “Don’t go crook on me for getting crook”
    • GOING OFF – Angry to the point of yelling
    • Hot under the collar - Getting angry
    • Mad as a cut snake - Very angry; crazy; eccentric. Also mad as a snake. The two different phrases derive from the fact that ‘mad’ has two main senses - ‘crazy’ and ‘angry’. The ‘crazy’ sense is illustrated by ‘that bloke wearing a teapot on his head is as mad as a cut snake and the angry sense is illustrated by “be careful of the boss this afternoon, he’s as mad as a cut snake.”
      • There are similar phrases in Australian English including MAD AS A MEAT AXE and MAD AS A GUMTREE FULL OF GALAHS as a meat axe and mad as a gumtree full of galahs. Mad as a (cut) snake was first recorded in 1900
    • ROPEABLE - Very angry
  • DEVO – Devastated
  • DOG’S BREAKFAST – Complete chaos, a big mess
  • Flash as a rat with a gold tooth - Ostentatious, showy and a bit too flashily dressed
  • GOBSMACKED – Surprised or shocked
  • Happy little vegemite - Vegemite is a concentrated yeast extract used as a spread. The phrase happy little vegemite means “a cheerful or satisfied person.” The phrase derives from an advertising campaign,
  • KNACKERED - Tired
  • RAPT – Very happy
  • ROOTED – Tired or Broken
  • SOOK - To sulk. If someone calls you a sook, it is because they think you are WHIGNING (complaining)
  • SPEWIN’ - Not happy
  • STOKED – Happy, Pleased
  • STONKERED - Beaten, defeated or cornered
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