Transcript of AE 1340 - The Goss: 10 Aussie Slang Terms & Their Weird Origins

G'day, you mob! Pete here. And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news, whether locally Down Under here in Australia or non locally overseas in other parts of the world, okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills.

In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at AussieEnglish.com.au, where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

Dad.

Pete.

What's going on?

Not much.

How you been?

Crap.

It's been a long time.

Yeah. It has.

This is episode number six for the day that we're smashing out. The cats are getting angry.

The cats are. The cats are marauding around us now. They were sleeping on the couch in the corner. Now they're around, annoying us.

It's always really interesting. Like it gets to about 1:00. I feed them at about 2:33. Peaches is always the hungry one, and she meows like crazy. The only time she makes noises when she's hungry.

Or when I walk in the front door.

Does she do it? Yeah?

Yeah. She yells at me until I pat her.

Whereas, Scrap, the other cat, doesn't make any noise when he's hungry.

He just follows her around!

He just walks around. He just paces.

What she said? What she said?

He never meows like that. But when he wants to go out at night to go for a walk, is when he meows. So it's obviously it's. They both do it for things they really want to do.

Yeah.

But it's funny how they don't both do it for the same things. Well, one, peaches doesn't like walking.

Yeah.

In general.

Walking?

That's it. You mean sleeping? Sleep walking?

Yeah.

All right. I, um, I asked ChatGPT to give me a list of, uh, weird and wonderful slang terms and expressions from Australian English that have interesting origins. Often a lot of these origins are kind of, like, contested or uncertain. So.

Yeah, it's a chat BT version.

Chatgpt also hallucinated it. So take it with a grain of salt, and we'll point out any that..

We'll point out, that you could B.S. it. Yeah.

But I thought it would be a bit of fun.

There's BS, that's the first one.

Yeah. What does that mean, Dad?

Yeah. Bullshit.

Bullshit.

Yeah, but what does it mean?

Would you use it? Yeah.

Something is bullshit.

No. That's BS. Yeah. Which actually isn't an Australian one. I think that's used in America and Britain as well, but it's.

Yeah, it's.

But you hear it in Australia all the time.

There's so many that I feel come from Britain that we would just never use. Those..

Oh, there's a whole lot of terms. There's a whole lot of..

I feel like they've got so much more than than America.

Oh they do. Yeah. And I think the other thing is that we get exposed now to so much American culture via movies and TV and social media, that it becomes normalised. Whereas when I was growing up as a kid, there was a lot less of that and much more of our exposure was British.

Yeah.

Um, but in the last 60 years, those of Britain's waned and America has taken off in terms of its cultural, its inculturation into Australia.

I have one of my friends who moved to Britain probably ten years ago, and he's been living there ever since. He uses all those now, all the time. And I'm just like, Dude, you sound like an idiot. He'll be like, That guy's such a bellend. And I'm like,

I don't even know what that means.

It's the tip of a penis.

Yeah, I know, yeah.

But it's like, That's so dumb, man. It just sounds dumb. It doesn't sound offensive. It sounds innocuous.

Well, even my..

Bellend.

My sister who, Ingrid, who has lived in Canada, for which she's now a now Canadian, but lived there for more time than she lived in Australia, and she has .started to North Americanise expressions and I just shake my head and go. She doesn't really speak with a North American accent. She's got an Australian accent. Yeah, that's what her daughters say. She sounds like a Canadian until you arrive. And she's Australian again. Um, but yeah, I could care less is the one that I just shake my head at and go, That's so American. And even Canadians have picked it up as an American expression. It makes no sense.

Well, it could be argued that it makes sense sarcastically. Like you're being sarcastic. Like, yeah, I could care less.

Yeah, but it's not.

I could not care less.

They just got it wrong. And she knows that. She didn't say that until she moved to Canada.

It's almost Democratic...

... pick it up.

You hear people saying things around you. And this is what's happened with my friend, who, you know, is very Australian but lives in Britain. He hears other people around him always saying 'bellend'.

Yeah.

And so you just start doing it because it's an easier way of communicating.

Oh, yeah, exactly.

Because if you keep saying..

I think and not just expressions, but, um, some places, I reckon if I moved to Scotland, I would speak with a Scottish accent very quickly.

That's because you love the Scottish accent.

I do, but it, but it wouldn't be. It wouldn't be a deliberate thing. It would just. You just start to evolve. But.

Yeah.

Anyway...

It's almost like you've got some sort of, like form of autism where you would be like, you just, you match too quickly and everyone would be like, That's a bit strange, dude.

Yeah, I know. What?

You're trying too hard.

Yes. Moved to Vietnam and start speaking with a Vietnamese Australian English accent.

Yeah, Just cut it out, dude!

Stop trying to be a smart arse!

All right, number one, fair dinkum.

Fair dinkum.

What does it mean, Dad?

It means well, there's..

Multiple ways to..

Yeah, there's two versions of it, right. Basically, if something is fair dinkum, it means it is true and correct.

Yeah.

Um, and then the expression that you use when, with the rising intonation question mark on it.

Fair dinkum!

Fair dinkum means, Is that true?

Really?

Really?

Really.

Yeah.

Seriously? Yeah. Genuine. Honest. But its origins are debated. Some believe it comes from British dialects, while others trace it to Chinese gold miners in the 19th century, where 'din gum' meant 'real gold'.

Real gold. Yes. I've heard. I've heard the Chinese gold one before. But.

Yeah. It's. I almost like when there are slang terms or expressions or words where the origins are contested like that.

Yeah.

And then there's multiple options. And the next one is similar. Um. Buckley's chance.

Yeah, this one's a, I expect neither of them is true, but if 'Buckley's chance' means 'there is no chance that's ever going to happen'.

Yeah, You've got Buckley's.

Yeah. And the two things come from William Buckley, who was the first white person to, um, really call what we now call the state of Victoria home. When the original settlement in Victoria in 1803 by Lieutenant Collins.

Dads dropping all his knowledge.

Dropping all the history knowledge. Um, it lasted about six months. It was a bunch of a few military people, but a bunch of convicts.

Well, he was a brickie or something, right? Or a stonemason.

And William Buckley, um, just left the camp.

Well, five of them did.

Yeah, they did, but four of them..

They ran off.

Four of them were recaptured. Very quickly.

Came back as they..

They came back cos they ran out of food and water. But Buckley just disappeared. And then the whole lot just picked up and went back to Sydney.

Yeah. They were like, Oh, well he's dead.

This is well, they ran out of water. They went through their first summer and the little creek that they were by ran out of water. So they disappeared. But Buckley disappeared. And so that idea- and then 30 years later..

32.

When, um, the first, uh, fleet of ships was coming into, um, into Port Phillip Bay.

Well, this was Batman.

To actually settle. Yeah, it was before that. It was Batman. Batman, before they came to settle, Batman came in to and found a place to settle, which we now call Melbourne on the Yarra River. And the first place he landed was a little, what is now a little village on the Bellarine Peninsula called Indented Head. And this giant, because Buckley was apparently six foot six, um, which is very unusual for at the time. Exactly.

Or if he was, imagine what he would have been!

He apparently just walked out and said, Hello. And this is on the other side of the bay, like this is, if you were walking there..

G'day, mate!

It's like 150km around the bay. And he had lived with Aboriginal people for 32 years.

Didn't he come out saying, um, you guys might want to be careful. The locals are plotting to kill you.

Yeah, exactly.

Like that was the only..

I can talk them down for a while, but get back in your ship.

They actually see you, and they're pretty, pretty keen..

And so that the, the myth came that 'You have Buckley's chance of surviving', um..

Which, ironically, is that he survived.

He survived! I know, um, but the other myth in Melbourne was there was a department store in Melbourne from the 1920s until the 1960s called Buckley's and Nunn. And so the there was the expression used to be..

And Nunn, that is spelt N U double N. Yeah, surname Nunn.

So it was son. It was Mr. Buckley and Mr. Nunn who started the the store. And so the expression wa- used not to be, when I was a kid it wasn't 'You had Buckley's chance'. It was, 'You had two chances. Buckley's and none'.

Yeah.

And so that's where the confusion is between them. So.

Which we don't use anymore?

No, I suspect..

I don't use Buckley's and none anymore.

No, we just use Buckley's.

Yeah.

You get Buckley's..

.. to shorten the Buckley's.

Yeah. And I think that's where the William Buckley story was added. I'm pretty convinced that it was the Buckley's and Nunn store thing. It was a very Melbourne expression.

Yeah. Okay.

Um, and that would be true for William Buckley as well. It's a very Victorian expression, but, um, because I can't imagine that that expression started in the sort of 1840s.

Nah.

When William Buckley's story became a thing.

Yeah.

And people aren't going to retrospectively turn any historical event like how many slang terms are going, you know, he had six wives. Oh, he must be Henry the Eighth. You know, it just doesn't happen. You know, it's so.

Yeah.

We don't retrospectively do this, the-.

Dig through history and find something interesting to make a slang term..

Exactly.

The legend becomes the slang term straight away.

Yeah.

So. Anyway.

Number three. Dog's breakfast.

Dog's breakfast. Yeah. It means there's a mess all over the place. And that's an obvious one, because dogs tend to eat fairly rapidly and spread shit all over the place. Plus, it used to be, when I was a kid, we didn't. Our dog used to eat just the leftover scraps from the night before, so it looked like a dog's breakfast was just a whole lot of just leftover rubbish thrown in the dog's bowl for him to eat.

What do you call them? Garbage disposals.

Yeah, exactly.

Labradors.

Yeah. If you've got nothing better to do, look up the, uh. There's a YouTube video of a Labrador and a German shepherd being fed pasta. Spaghetti.

Yeah.

No more needs to be said. Go and look it up.

Yep, yep. I can imagine how it goes.

Yeah.

Gulp. Um, so it's used to describe a mess or a disaster. Now, um, this phrase may have originated from Australian sheep shearers who often fed their dogs scraps and leftovers, creating an unappetising mixture.

There you go.

Number four. Cactus.

Cactus.

If something is cactus..

Over. It's dead.

Yeah.

Can you give me an example?

Um. Uh..

The car broke down.

The car broke. It's cactus. Or my footy team's lost five in a row. Their chances of this year are cactus.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's all done. Done and dusted. Gone. You're doing much better at the, um, slang terms in the..

The Australian ones, yeah,

The Australian episode, Dad.

Yeah, funny though.

Yeah. So where do you reckon it comes from?

I don't know. I don't know about this one.

I don't know either. But according to ChatGPT, this likely comes from- likely. There you go. At least you got a clarifying word in there of, like, the quality of my bets. Yeah. Um, likely comes from the idea that cacti thrive in harsh conditions where nothing else survives, making it a metaphor for something beyond repair.

Nah. It's BS. They have literally hallucinated that one.

Yeah.

They, they that's putting together three bits of information and coming up with a conclusion that bears no resemblance to the original question.

It's always interesting when ChatGPT does it with things that clearly there's not very much information on the internet about it. Yeah.

So it makes it up.

Yeah, that's a weird one, isn't it?

Nah, it's cactus.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah. It's so annoying too, because you kind of like, there is an origin. This has to have come from somewhere.

One person made it up. Like underwater basket weaving. I made that up, I literally did. I first said that in a classroom 35 years ago. I just invented it off the top of my head. And you look it up on Wikipedia and he's not referenced to me.

Really?

But yeah, and everybody uses it now.

Really?

Yeah, yeah.

There you go. That'll be on..

Underwater basket weaving is a metaphorical example of a an occupation that nobody would ever have.

Yeah.

Sorry. I'm just collecting another drink here. Recaffeinate.

Um, what do you call, wetting your whistle?

Wetting your whistle, yeah. There's another one.

That has always seemed so much more sexual than, than it is.

Winning the whistle. No?! Try whistling with dry lips.

I know, I know. But it just has this sexual sound connotation.

Wetting the..

Wetting your whistle. I think I'm gonna go wet my whistle..

.. way too many responses to that. All of which will be deleted from.

No. You'd be surprised how much of this I leave unedited.

Oh, no. No, you won't delete it. But the, whatever service provider you use, will block that one.

Number five. Dunny.

Dunny? Toilet. Usually a, uh, another reference to it was a thunderbox. Which, which I think is which I think is the origin. Um, but yeah, Thunderbox was the, it was an outdoor, outback toilet, like a little shack.

Why was it called a thunderbox, Dad?

Farting.

Yeah. Farting. Farting. Yeah.

Um. But. Yeah. So it was an outback toilet. Just literally a little shed around a hole in the ground with a seat over.

An outdoor dunny.

Yeah, and I reckon it came from Thunderbox. I reckon 'dunny' is a contraction of Thunderbox. But.

Thunderbox. Dunny.

Dunny.

Dunny?

Dunno. Does it have a, does chat- what does ChatGPT..

Reckons this comes from the old English word 'dunny can', meaning an outdoor toilet. It was commonly. It was common in the early Australian settlements where outdoor toilets.

It won't be old, Old English. Fuck off. Like the..

Old, as in it was an older The English, Old English..

Old English is..

1500 years ago.

Pre-medieval.

Dad, it's not capital O. It was like oh..

Well, you're reading it out. I'm not listening.

How do you, how do you read out of capital? All right, number six, 'hit the frog and toad'.

That's just rhyming slang for 'road'.

Yeah. Hit the road. Hit the road.

And there are, in Australia. Because the, um, cockneys from, people from East London. And..

They were renowned for Cockney Irish..

Have lots of rhyming slang. And lots of Australian, uh, convicts came from the criminal elements in East London and they, um, political refugees effectively from Ireland.

Mhm.

And so Australia just picked up this rhyming slang business and we've got thousands of them.

But we don't just use them anymore, right.

But we've got thousands of them that have been invented more lately. We don't use the old cockney ones. 'Frog and toad' is an old Cockney one.

There is some weird ones..

'Apples and pears'.

Yeah.

Um. Yeah.

What was the other one?

'Apples and pears'.

'Apples and pears'.

Yeah. 'Get up them apples and pears'.

Stairs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's the thing. You can kind of work it out based on the ending through context as well. That it's a bit of fun. Um, what was the other one? Oh, yeah. He's, 'sweet Fanny Adams'.

Yes.

Is short for 'sweet F.A.'.

Yeah.

Sweet fuck all! No chance.

Yeah. That's not a rhyming slang one. That's just replacing, uh, words, making them more palatable. Yeah. To the acronym.

When we do a few of those with 'see you next Tuesday'.

Yeah. Yeah.

That guy's a real See you next Tuesday.

See (C) U N T.

Yeah.

Cunt. Yeah. Um. Jesus, the cats are beating the shit out of each other in the background.

And that's where they- you possibly seen the, um, bumper stickers that have..

See you in the N T.

See you, tiny little "in the", N T.

Yeah.

Northern Territory.

The Australian humour, right? Yeah. This is a classic example of Australian rhyming slang where 'frog and toad' stands for 'road'.

It's not Australian rhyming slang. It's..

Well, it's one of those things where..

That one is actually Cockney rhyming slang.

Yeah, well, I guess it depends on how you're defining it. Where is it used? Is it Australian slang? Because it is used in Australia..

That would be 200 years old. And it was created in London.

Yeah. All right. What about number seven? Larrikin?

Larrikin is a, um.

Mischievous person. This really gets dad's goat.

Pete has been extremely mischievous by saying that. Yeah, it's one of my real hates is- mispronunciation of words is fine.

Pronunciation, Dad! Mispronounce..

Mispronunciation of words is fine. If the word is ambiguous. But when you actually add vowels that do not exist.

No. It's mischievous.

No it's not. Anyway.

You're gonna get really annoyed when they change the spelling and put it in the dictionary.

Oh, don't worry, there's a few in there already that I.

What was the other one? Irregardless.

Irregardless. And versing.

Versing?

Versing.

Ah, diverse someone.

Diverse someone. It is not a word!

He's going to drop some poetry.

It is not exactly..

He's about to drop a verse.

Exactly. Versing.

'I verse you'.

That comes from- just a bit of explanation. Because we can throw these- before they go, What the hell are they talking about? Um, the..

The word is..

The old Latin.

Mischievous.

Yes, but we're talking about 'versing'. The old Latin term 'versus' meaning 'to compete with or against'. I think it comes from a Latin..

Pete versus Dad. Yeah.

Yeah. 'Pete versus Dad' does not mean Pete is 'versing' Dad.

Yeah, and it sounds like it, because it sounds like 'he versus you'.

I know.

It sounds like it is a conjugation of the second..

Yeah. And people have just missed it. Missed the pronunciation. Anyway. Larrikin? Yes. A mischievous, fun loving, slightly naughty person. But everybody loves them anyway.

Where does it come from?

I got no idea.

The Irish pronounce pronunciation of 'larking'.

Larking. Fooling around.

Lar-rking. Yeah, because I think they would..

Larrikin.

They was..

He was larriking about.

Yeah. He's larking about, um. Playing around. Yeah. Fooling about. And so, yeah, it's used to describe a cheeky or mischievous person.

Yeah.

Troublemakers. Number eight. She'll be right.

She'll be right, mate. It always. She'll be right, comma, mate.

She'll be right, mate.

She'll be right, mate. Don't worry about it. Yes.

Uh, what does it mean?

It means don't worry about it. It'll be all right.

How would you use it?

Um. You come to me and go. Oh, no. It's gotten a bit of trouble at school. I go, ah, she'll be right. He'll look after himself.

Meaning everything will be okay. The phrase reflects the laid back Australian attitude. It may have originated from bush culture, where settlers had to be optimistic despite tough conditions. That doesn't really give much, but.

No, it's it's an expression. The interesting part of it is the use of the feminine.

Yeah.

Like turning 'it' into 'she'.

Well, we do that with mechanical objects quite often, like cars. Is this your car? Yeah, she's a good one. Yeah.

Boats.

Well, boats are always feminine, aren't they. Anyway, like they get feminine names.

Yeah.

They're not going to be masculine names usually. But for some reason, devices and machines we often use. Oh, she's a good old girl. This machine that I've got for my company. You know, we've been using this machine for years. She's a, she's a ripper. She's awesome.

Yeah.

I wonder where that started and why. Maybe it's a male thing of, like, you see it as an endearing..

Affectionate, endearing..

Affectionate thing.

And if you're a straight male, you have that kind of attitude towards women. And so you think of, um, devices and mechanical things in a romantic kind of way..

And life!

She'll be right. Yeah. That's it. So it is one of those interesting things. And women can say it as well as men. Don't have to worry about it.

No.

Um, like a stunned mullet.

Like a stunned mullet. Like a stunned mullet. It literally means that. It means they appear to have lost consciousness. Or the looks like they're dopey.

Shocked.

Shocked. And like a mullet is a fish. And fishermen will often, rather than cutting them open and bleeding them, we're on a boat. They'll often just turn around and smack their head on the side of a boat to kill them.

Yeah.

So, 'He looked like a stunned mullet'.

Used to describe someone looking shocked or confused. This comes from the image of a mullet fish caught and left motionless on a boat or dock. So how would you use it?

Well, it's always related to a person, obviously. Well, a dog would look like a stunned mullet. Yeah.

When would a dog look like a stunned mullet, Dad?

Well, when it's just running to a tree. 'Huh?'.

Yeah. That's it. That's it. It's.

When somebody gets shocked by what just happened. Oh, he looked like a stunned mullet.

Number ten is bogan. We've sort of covered this.

We've done Bogan and I have no idea about the origin, so I'll be interested to see what ChatGPT comes up with.

Well, what is it first, for anyone who's not sure.

Um, you typically was somebody of, uh, appearing to be of lower class, lower socioeconomic, and almost everybody would not declare themselves as a bogan.

Mhm. Well, it's become more more. Yeah. Now you do. But. yeah..

But historically, it was- bogan was an insult. Now it's a lifestyle!

And it's sort of, there's more pride in it now, I think.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's, um, referring to an unsophisticated or working class Australian. The origin of Bogan is unclear. Some theories suggest it comes from a rural town in New South Wales, Bogan Shire, uh, while others believe it was a schoolyard slang in the 1980s. So you wonder.

But schoolyard slang has to have an origin that's saying..

Yeah, yeah, yeah..

That's saying the origin is that it has an origin.

Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.

Chatgpt. Wanker. Refer to previous episodes.

It must be hard. It's a hard. It's a hard thing. I don't think there's enough, um, published stuff on the internet about Australian slang. They just do the low hanging fruit. Arvo. What's Arvo?

What's arvo? Abbreviation for Arvo?

Yeah, exactly. Anyway, hopefully you guys enjoyed that episode.

Yeah.

And we'll, um, chat to you next time. You'll have to let us know what your favourites are. See ya!

Bye!