Transcript of AE 1428 - 10 Australian Slang Terms & Expressions - Does Dad Know It? Ep 1

Pete:
G'day, you mob! Welcome to Aussie English. I'm your host, Pete, and my objective here is to teach you guys the English spoken Down Under. So whether you want to sound like a fair dinkum Aussie or you just want to understand what the flipping hell we're on about when we're having a yarn, you've come to the right place. So sit back, grab a cuppa, and enjoy Aussie English. Let's go!

Pete:
G'day guys. Pete here from Aussie English. Welcome to the first episode of Does Dad Know It? This is going to be a series where I test my dad on Australian slang to see whether he actually knows it, what it means, whether he'd use it, and if it's something that Australians actually say!

Pete:
If you want to learn over 1001 Australian slang words and expressions, be sure to grab my e-book, Aussie Slang Dictionary at slang e-book dot com. So just go to www.slangbook.com.

Pete:
All right, Dad.

Ian:
Pete!

Pete:
So I got ten words and expressions for you to see what you reckon. Might as well just get into it, huh? Drongo.

Ian:
It is a dopey, stupid person.

Pete:
So can you give me...

Ian:
Also a couple of species of birds.

Pete:
So how would you spell drongo?

Ian:
D R O N G O.

Pete:
D R O N G O. So how would you use this in a sentence?

Ian:
Oh, you bloody drongo!

Pete:
When would you use it? When would you when would you call someone a drongo?

Ian:
Somebody who's done something stupid. I don't know. Tripped over in the street. Oh, you bloody drongo! What are you doing?

Pete:
Is this. Is this also...

Ian:
Known as the Australian accent? Just falls in with. You can't say drongo.

Pete:
Yeah, you have to kind of..

Ian:
It just doesn't work!

Pete:
You have to kind of overdo it a bit.

Ian:
Sorry. Got to take a drink here.

Pete:
Yeah, go for it. So would you. Is this the kind of thing that you would use to sort of soften an insult a bit, too? I feel like.

Ian:
Rather than calling somebody an idiot. Idiot has a, a literal meaning as well as an implied meaning, whereas drongo is sort of it's like you're taking the piss as well as insulting them.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Taking a piss. That's another one you can throw on the bottom.

Pete:
Yeah. You've just. You're getting through my content, Dad. Just take it easy. All right? So, drongo, a fool or idiot. Don't be a drongo. My oath. So, my oath. Would you use this today?

Ian:
No.

Pete:
What does it mean? When would you use it?

Ian:
It's either means. Well, depending on the intonation in your voice. If you said my oath, it means you are, confirming that something is true.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
If you go, my oath, you go. You're asking, Is something true?

Pete:
So it's an interesting one, right? It's a bit outdated now. I think we would probably say bloody oath.

Ian:
Yeah. Or the obvious one.

Pete:
You could swear here. It's a safe space for swearing, Dad. You know, it's all part of education. So you would use this as absolutely. That's definitely true.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
Oh yeah. My oath.

Ian:
My oath.

Pete:
But it's outdated. You would probably say. Oh, yeah. Bloody oath.

Ian:
Or Ken oath. Which short for fucking oath.

Pete:
Yeah. You'll see. You'll actually see that in some ads, right. You'll see them writing Ken as in K E N and then oath. Ken Oath, right.

Ian:
Ken oath. Yeah.

Pete:
So how would you- when would you use this?

Ian:
Well, it's confirming something. Somebody.

Pete:
Bloody Siri! Getting activated by my Dad, on the phone.

Ian:
I know.

Pete:
It said, you know what it said? It said, I don't understand.

Ian:
I don't understand?!

Pete:
It's because we're using Aussie slang. Siri.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Speak Australian!

Pete:
Speaking in Portuguese. Sorry, my phone's in Portuguese, guys.

Ian:
So where were we? Why would you use my oath? You'd. You'd say somebody asked me, Did that really happen?

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah, in my oath, mate. Yeah, yeah.

Pete:
All right. Number three. What about bin chicken?

Ian:
Bin chicken? Oh, that's that's a non-victorian thing. Even though we have...

Pete:
You know what?

Ian:
White ibis. In Victoria.

Pete:
It originated here.

Ian:
Really?

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
As an insult for Queensland?

Pete:
No no no no no no no. Bin chickens. The ibis bird that dig through your bins, right?

Ian:
Yeah, but don't do it in Victoria.

Pete:
No, they do, they do. They do it in Healesville Sanctuary.

Ian:
Oh, yeah.

Pete:
That's where they originated.

Ian:
Oh, really?

Pete:
That's where. Cause I was talking on a previous podcast I was talking to. I think it might have been The Bird Guy. What was his name again?

Ian:
The bird guy.

Pete:
Who wrote the book. And..

Ian:
Sean Dooley?

Pete:
Sean Dooley. I think it was him telling me that bin chickens originated at Healesville Sanctuary because they had a whole bunch of them. They learnt that behaviour and then they flew off and dispersed throughout. And, you know...

Ian:
Taught everybody else!

Pete:
And then they became much more common and abundant with that behaviour up in Queensland and, and Sydney and New South Wales. So a bin chicken, what is it?

Ian:
It's an ibis, a bird.

Pete:
Why is it called a bin chicken?

Ian:
Because they tend to rob rubbish bins in the streets, particularly around shopping centres and cafes.

Pete:
And they just kind of ugly, weird looking birds, right? Like so the insult kind of fits.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
They're a bit, they're a bit gross. Okay. So you would use bin chicken today?

Ian:
I would.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
I don't know how many other people would.

Pete:
I mean, you would probably say, oh, look, there's an ibis. And then if it was behaving that way...

Ian:
Yeah, bloody bin chicken!

Pete:
Bin chicken. All right. Number four, Chuck a sickie.

Ian:
Chuck a sickie is...

Pete:
What's a sickie? And where are you chucking it?

Ian:
Where are you chucking it? Yes, a sickie is a, a sick day off work.

Pete:
Mhm.

Ian:
And to chuck one is to take one. I'm not sure how the chuck being a slang term for throw.

Pete:
Yes.

Ian:
How to throw a sick leave day actually makes sense, but.

Pete:
I guess it's like chuck a wobbly, chuck a tantrum. It's that kind of thing, right.

Ian:
Yeah. Well, throw a tantrum is one thing too.

Pete:
Like, do the thing.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
In that sense. Chuck a tantrum, chuck a tanty. There's another one for you guys, chuck a tantrum.

Ian:
Chuck a tantrum.

Pete:
Lose your nana. Get really upset. Yeah. Chuck a sickie, would you say Chuck a sickie?

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
Yep. When have you chucked a sickie, Dad?

Ian:
I have never chucked a sickie. And it's usually Chuck chucking a sickie is done when you are not actually sick. If you take a sick day off when you are sick, it's not considered to be chucking a sickie.

Pete:
Yeah, it's right, it is more...

Ian:
If you chuck a sickie on the golf course.

Pete:
Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. So the definition here is take a day off work pretending to be sick. Yeah. He chucked a sickie so he could go fishing. All right, we're halfway through number five. Bottle-o. You'd never use this, would you, Dad?

Ian:
Well, there's two...

Pete:
Well, you've never been to a bottle-o, have you?

Ian:
No. There's two versions of bottle-o. When I was a kid, the bottle was the guy who used to come and collect recyclable bottles from your house.

Pete:
Okay.

Ian:
And then it became slang for the bottle shop. Which is usually associated with a hotel where you actually go and buy takeaway alcohol.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Usually in bottles. Funnily enough, it's never called a can-o.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
A lot of people buying cans.

Pete:
That'd be very weird, right?

Ian:
Can-o.

Pete:
Bottle-o. So a bottle-o is a liquor store.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
What, when would you use this term?

Ian:
I'm just heading down the bottle-o to grab a six pack.

Pete:
And you'd use this frequently?

Ian:
No.

Pete:
Not anymore?

Ian:
I wouldn't use it.

Pete:
Would you typically say...

Ian:
I would use the shop's name! Yeah.

Pete:
Like BWS or Dan Murphy's or.

Ian:
Yeah, whatever. Probably. Or you don't need to specify the location if you're already specified the activity.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
If I'm going to buy beer, I'll just say I'm going to buy beer because it's implied that I'm going to the bottle-o.

Pete:
Yeah yeah yeah. I'm going to go for a swim at the pool. I guess you could go swim in other places, but.

Ian:
Yeah, but so yeah, I probably wouldn't use bottle-o mostly because I grew up using it in its first version.

Pete:
I definitely grew up using this as the...

Ian:
Well, we didn't.

Pete:
Liquor store.

Ian:
Collecting bottles from your house when you were a kid.

Pete:
Not at all. When did that stop? 60s?

Ian:
60s, probably, yeah. Funnily enough, when we stopped recycling bottles and then we brought it back in again in the 90s.

Pete:
All right, number six, beauty butler.

Ian:
Beauty bottler. Well, that's a double up. Means the same thing.

Pete:
What's a beauty bottler.

Ian:
It means a good thing.

Pete:
I have never heard this one in conversation.

Ian:
Beauty, beauty gets used all the time.

Pete:
Beauty does. But beauty bottler.

Ian:
Bottler. Bottler is an old one. Probably came from the 30s and 40s, if not before.

Pete:
Yeah. I imagine the idea is you're bottling something beautiful, put that beautiful thing in a bottle and sell it. You know, bottle.

Ian:
That one.

Pete:
Bottle that one. Keep it. Store it for later.

Ian:
Exactly.

Pete:
So beauty bottle, a bottler. How would you use this in a sentence?

Ian:
Well, I wouldn't use the two together, but it would be that, you know, somebody brings you around a present and you go, Oh, beauty! Bottler!

Pete:
Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, I don't think I would use it. That new cafe is a real beauty bottler. I think the average Australian now with that one would be like, what?

Ian:
Yeah. Bottler. Bottlers' just too old.

Pete:
Yeah. But that's I've included these in the dictionary just so that if you guys ever do come across them, whether reading or hearing them from, say, really old people, really old.

Ian:
Really old.

Pete:
People in their 150s, you'll know what it means. Muck around,

Ian:
Muck around?

Pete:
Number 6.

Ian:
Mess around.

Pete:
6, 7?

Ian:
Fool around.

Pete:
Six, six, seven. Six, seven.

Ian:
I think... We're up to a number greater than five.

Pete:
My kids are gonna be listening to this being like, oh, six, seven. All right, what do we got? 1234567. Yeah. Okay. Muck around.

Ian:
Muck around means to mess around, to fool about.

Pete:
To waste time. Behave playfully, right?

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
Do you use this?

Ian:
Muck around?

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
Yeah. Usually when I'm instructing grandchildren. Stop mucking around.

Pete:
Yelling at them. Yeah. And that's the polite version, right?

Ian:
Yes, exactly. You only need to change one letter.

Pete:
That's it. Stop fucking around. You probably wouldn't say that.

Ian:
Not to the grandchildren.

Pete:
No. And you can say piss farting around.

Ian:
Piss farting around. Yeah. That's good.

Pete:
I learned that from you!

Ian:
I know! Piss farting was one of my from my childhood. Sorry. I'm gonna take another drink.

Pete:
Yeah. That was. I remember hearing you.

Ian:
Say a, a very common thing for piss. Farting around was just mucking about.

Pete:
As in you, like, literally wasting time urinating and farting.

Ian:
Well, not literally, but metaphorically.

Pete:
The picture that it paints is not pretty around. So how how would you use this in a sentence to muck around?

Ian:
Stop mucking around.

Pete:
So it's usually that negative, like don't muck around.

Ian:
No, you're not gonna see I'm going to go and muck around.

Pete:
Well, I guess you could say there were a few kids at the store mucking around in the parking lot or something.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
All right. Number eight. Chuff off.

Ian:
Chuff off means to leave.

Pete:
Is this when you tell someone to do or it's what you say you are doing when you chuff off.

Ian:
Oh, you hear both, you know. I'm going to chuff off.

Pete:
You should chuff off, mate.

Ian:
No, no, not. That's usually piss off.

Pete:
Yeah. Not like get out of here.

Ian:
Yeah. No it's. I'm going to leave. I'm going to shove off. And I've always thought maybe it isn't. I've always thought it came from getting on a steam train and heading off.

Pete:
Yeah. That makes sense.

Ian:
I have absolutely no evidence to suggest that that is true or not.

Pete:
It's funny how often that happens with. I've noticed myself doing that with slang terms or expressions where I'm like, I have an idea in my mind of where this originated. And then you look it up and it's like, nope, I know your brain has come up with an explanation and it turns out, nah, that's garbage. Yeah. All right. So how would you use this in a sentence? When would you say chuff off?

Ian:
Yeah. All right. I've had enough. Pete, I'm going to chuff off. See you later.

Pete:
Yeah. And it's, it's kind of like quickly, right. Like I'm just going to quickly leave, like, Sorry, guys.

Ian:
I'm. I'm not. I'm about to think about leaving. I'm out of here.

Pete:
You're not dawdling. You're not delaying getting out. All right, number nine. Bang on.

Ian:
Bang on means exactly.

Pete:
Exactly right. Perfectly accurate.

Ian:
Yes.

Pete:
Your answer was bang on. Bang on. Is that something you use?

Ian:
Possibly, but I don't. I can't remember using it last, but I'm not saying I haven't used it.

Pete:
It's one of those weird ones, right, where, you know, you hear this regularly.

Ian:
Yeah. Bang on.

Pete:
But you don't use it.

Ian:
You don't use it yourself.

Pete:
There's a few of those that come up every now and then where you're like, that's totally an expression I hear regularly.

Ian:
And you know what it means, and it fits the context.

Pete:
But it's not in my vocab that I just whip out all the time, right? Bang on. So how would you use it in a sentence if something's bang on?

Ian:
It's exactly right.

Pete:
Yeah. So, Oh mate, his answer was bang on.

Ian:
Yeah.

Pete:
All right. And number ten here. Do I get a little drum roll?

Ian:
Hang on. I, I...

Pete:
Two fingers?

Ian:
I won't do it on the microphone.

Pete:
Nah. Yeah.

Ian:
No. Oh 'nah yeah'. It's not. That's not even an expression. It's it's not slang. It's an expression, but it's a meaningless expression. And and it has a, it's equivalent. Yeah. Nah.

Pete:
Well they're opposites, aren't they?

Ian:
Yeah. But they're opposites, but exactly the same.

Pete:
Go with the last word that's said.

Ian:
Exactly right. Yeah. And funnily enough, it became I first heard it probably 20 years ago.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
With Australian footballers.

Pete:
Oh, really?

Ian:
Yeah. So yeah, I'm interviewing an Australian footballer hypothetically, and say, well, you know, are you going to be back this week for, you know, for the game. Yeah. Nah.

Pete:
Yeah. Nah. Yeah.

Ian:
And, and I'm sure it came from you give a response.

Pete:
You're already agreeing or disagreeing with something.

Ian:
But you're giving a response that is wasting time before you actually think of the real answer.

Pete:
Yeah.

Ian:
And then so you go, yeah.

Pete:
It's a placeholder for you talking.

Ian:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete:
While you're considering.

Ian:
Nah. Yeah, yeah.

Pete:
That's pretty much how I use it. Like if someone said, Oh, Pete, do you want to come over for some seafood? And I'd probably be like, what? Seafood? Because there's like, there's seafood. No, but I won't come over for. And there's. So if I was like, nah, and they said it's fish, I'd be like, yeah, I'll come over. It's just like, I'm changing my opinion halfway.

Ian:
So yeah nah.

Pete:
Mid sentence.

Ian:
Yeah. No, it's just a, the, the universal response when the answer could be yes or no, but that will become obvious in the following conversation.

Pete:
Yeah. It's a yeah or nah. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting one. But yeah. Nah. I think I catch myself saying yeah, nah more than nah yeah. It's like if I, I'm saying like, yes, I understand what you're saying. It's almost like I'm, I'm showing acceptance of what.

Ian:
Yes, but I disagree.

Pete:
Exactly like, oh gosh, what is it, Pete? Do you think that Geelong is going to win the AFL premiership this year? I might be like, yeah, nah, I don't reckon they will. Like yeah, I understand that you're asking this and yeah. Oh mate. No no no no. The more I think about it. Nah. All right. Well, that's the ten of them, Dad. So you reckon that that was a pretty good list? Bit of education in there?

Ian:
A bit of fun.

Pete:
A bit of fun. A bit of fun. Yeah?

Ian:
Bang on!

Pete:
Bang on. All right, can I. All right. Well, thanks for hanging out, guys. Let us know in the comments or a message what slang term you'd like him to tackle next, if you've got any, to run past Dad. And don't forget to grab the full Aussie slang dictionary at slangebook.com. Okay, see you in the next episode.

Ian:
Bye!

Pete:
All right, that's it for today. If you found this one helpful, leaving a quick review really does help other learners find the podcast. And if you know someone who's learning Aussie English, feel free to share this episode with them too, mate. Thanks for listening and I'll catch you in the next one.