Australianisms & Regional Slang

On the sauce, sozzled, twitchers, gunzels, bogans, stairmasters, grifters, drovers, Ben Dovers, kea campers

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You can't list a bunch of crazy-ass terms and not explain what they mean or i'll just think you're making them up.

Squibbly squobidity, squeezing your nut, sniffing the stiffy, throwing the tits, kicking a smelly cat, your auntie the crazy one, smothering the spooky.

I have made Lemon squares and Imperial Tart squares before with recipes requiring vinegar, both of which smelt and tasted divine.

I have a cake recipe that has vinegar in it and its both v easy to make and v popular with my friends. Its also vegan, if you change the icing to use something other than butter.

Entry 2: Nikko

Hey look! It's a pervasive use of marketing brand names in lieu of actual product names! Here in 'straya we call any large permanent (usually black) marker a Nikko, because that was a common brand of them for a good long time. Sort of how the Brits call all their ballpoint pens 'biros'. In fact, there are lots of examples of this kind of marketing-based vernacular! Here, there's a very common clothesline that's essentially a helicopter rotor, with four hoists stuck out from a central rotating axis and lines strung between them. For the longest time they were called 'Hills Hoists' because that was the marketing term for them!

'Straya.

Synonyms: Sharpie, marker, that thing you sniff to get high

I remember when i was a kid we used to call them vivids, but that brand has fallen out of a favor a bit and now its mostly sharpies. Wonder what caused that

globalization?

escalator, cellophane, aspirin, thermos, band-aid, astroturf, zamboni, taser, styrofoam, xerox, velcro, wite-out, vaseline, chapstick, coke, dumpster, crock-pot, cuisinart, kleenex, formica, jacuzzi, hula hoop, jello, mace, lava lamp, muzak, superglue, speedo, rollerblade, q-tip, post-it, popsicle

Jello makes puddings and flavoured gelatin, and that used to confuse me a lot. I'd buy a green Jello and then later notice it was in fact pistachio pudding. (No real problem, because I love pistachio pudding!)

An american friend of mine has been forever confused at the NZ tradition of having savouries at parties, and that we eat slice.

Those are not standalone words, stop that

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Where are you even

Also: A lot of them only become apparent when you talk to someone from somewhere quite different. Nothing like discovering your word for bell pepper (capsicum) is totally different to what your mother in law thinks it is (in dutch they're paprika???)

Also: A starling is a totally different bird

A lot of my motivation for starting this thread was being perennially confused at Eli (paramour) talking about things. Because if there's someone who has a command of Australian vernacular, it's them: there are still moments where they can say a bunch of shit and I won't understand anything.

I need to convince Ren to post in here a bit. We get a bit confused at each other occasionally. :B

maybe that's because New York vernacular is the world's vernacular.

A slice: an actual slice, but of a very specific substance
Chuck it: don't actually chuck it any more than you literally throw stuff you throw away
*adjective* as: Sweet as what? Sweet as a deep fried moro bar?
May think of others later.

More local slang that I understand but don't usually use:

to chirp: to playfully insult
to change: to switch the clothing you are currently wearing
to flunk: to utterly fail
cheesed: a way to describe someone who is annoyed/angry over a trivial or inconsequential topic

I feel pretty confident only one of those is regional

Entry 3: Sook

This one I hear really often. This is something you call someone, i.e. "Don't be such a sook", and it means to be a... crybaby, I guess? It gets thrown around a lot by Eli... hold on I'll ask them.

Eli says it's to be a whinger and a complainer, someone who whines instead of solving problems.

...hey, that means I'm a sook...

Are whinge and whine different words in australia too, or is that just a new zealand thing?

I'm pretty sure they are, yeah.

I feel pretty confident only one of those is regional

It's hard to tell...

Entry 4: Chuck a Sickie

To call in sick to work.

This one, strangely enough, gets thrown around a lot on Melbourne Cup day. It's a summer day in November where people race racehorses on a racetrack for racehorses, and we get inordinately obsessed with who wins and who poisoned whose horse and no one, absolutely no one, does any actual work on the day, opting instead to participate in the most Australian activity possible (aside from animal cruelty): getting fucking hammered.

Example: "You gonna chuck a sickie for the Melbourne Cup, love? Work won't need us that much!"

Cup day is a hell of an event here, too. I live just down the road from the actual racing track. Shit gets messy