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 Do you have a copy of the English Brides' Guide To Australia? If it was published as announced in the newspaper report below, it was intended to help English brides and fiancees understand what Australians were talking about... and the differences between the two cultures. As the daughter of an English warbride I was aware that there were different words... for example my mother always referred to the bootmaker as a cobbler, to a singlet as a vest and she said words like dance, bath and castle very differently to my friends' mothers.
So when there was a question on the warbrides forum about words brides who came to Australia would have found odd or different I put together my own list. Here it is - please add more words, comments, or corrections below if you have experienced anything different.
Many of the words used in Australia were the same as those used in the UK... These days we use - or understand - more American words thanks to American TV. Interestingly referring to ourselves as Aussies or Ozzies was popular in the First World War (with many spelling variations) but really only came back into favour with the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Words in common use in the 1940s and 1950s were:
Meals: Breakfast, :Lunch, Dinner - and supper was (and is) a late night snack. Tea is more commonly used to describe the drink.
Back of Bourke - the outback
Bathers - swimming costume
Billy - a can with a lid and handle used to boil water on the campfire Biscuits - cookies. Shortened to Bikkies. Today Australian children understand cookies thanks to Cookie Monster!
Bloke - man
Bloody - very e.g. a bloody good job
Blowie - blowfly
Bluey - a number of different meanings... Redhead, a blue cattledog, a bluebottle (stinging jellyfish).
Bodgie - a teenager who looked like Elvis. No longer used and then there's bodgy - meaning bad job!
Bogged - stuck in mud
Bonza - great
Bush - the countryside
Chook - chicken, hen
Cooee - also 'within cooee' - a call when you are trying to find someone Cozzie - swimming costume
Digger - soldier Dinky-di - genuine
Dunny - outside lavatory/toilet. Many warbrides encountered these to their horror!
Devon - a type of sausage meat
Fair dinkum - for real!
Fairy floss - cotton candy
Footy - Australian Rules Football
Fremantle Doctor - the wind that blows into Perth from Fremantle in Western Australia
Fridge - refrigerator
Full - drunk
Furphy - a lie, or false story
G'Day - good day
Garbo - the garbage collector
Icy pole, ice block - iced lolly on a stick
Kero - kerosene
Kindergarten, kindie - preschool
Lippy - lipstick
Manchester - household linen
The Pictures - the Movies. No longer used, we now say movies
Mate - friend - these days this is sometimes used by women as well as men. My grandfather who went to First World War called a mate a cobber.
Metho - methylated spirits
Milk bar - a local shop that sold everything from milk, bread and other essentials, but not pharmaceutical items
Milko - the milkman. When I was a child the milk was delivered to our front step by a milkman with a horse and cart. Likewise bread.
Mob - crowd, group of people, not necessarily troublesome Mozzie - mosquito Muster - Round up sheep or cattle Never never - the outback Nipper - small child, these days it is reserved for junior lifesaver Paddock - a fenced field Pavlova - a dessert made of baked meringue filled with cream and fruit, frequently strawberries and passionfruit. These days every exotic fruit may be added.
Penny - a coin - same as England.
Petrol station - gas station - the English call it petrol as well so this would not have been any different for the English brides, those from Canada and North America would have noticed it though.
Pint - in the pub this was a large glass of beer.
Pom, pommy - Englishman
Port - suitcase, only used in Queensland
Postie - postman, mailman
Quid - a pound, the currency until 1966 was pounds, shillings and pence
Reckon - you reckon! Means absolutely
Sleepout - a verandah converted to a sleeping area, usually without glass windows.
Snag - sausage
Swagman, swaggie - a tramp
Togs - swimsuit
Tucker - food
Vegemite - a black yeast spread put on toast, bread, biscuits. Similar to English Marmite
Veggies - vegetables Whinge - complain
Widgie - the girlfriend of the teenage boy who looked like Elvis. No longer used
Wog - a germ or illness. In the second half of the 20th century this also came to be used to describe immigrants from the Mediterranean!
The article below appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald on the 26 November 1945.
English Brides' Guide to Australia
written by A STAFF CORRESPONDENT IN LONDON
THE Australian News and Information Bureau in London is
preparing an illustrated booklet, "English Brides' Guide to Australia,"
to issue to more than 2,000 English brides of Australian
Servicemen.
In general, the average Englishwoman's
knowledge of Australia
is limited to vague historical details from half-forgotten school books.She is not alone in this, for English men,
too. think of Australia
as inhabited by Bradmans and Oldfields. kangaroos, boomerang-throwing
shêep-farmèrs led by Ned Kelly, and Bondi beach bathers har ried by voracious
sharks.
Before the war, the London Press was apt to
confine its Australian news to "the Bill's" reactions to body-line
bowling, bush fires, (gold rushes, and the peculiar habit of testing unwanted
immigrants in Erse and Sanscrit. English school children hold firmly to the
conviction that their Aus tralian opposite numbers ride horses to school, are
coached individually by Test cricketers, and go fishing at week-ends on the
Oreat Barrier reef.
The arrival in England in 1940 of Aus tralian Army and R.A.A.F.
units tended lo confirm the legend of a race of fit giants living under the
Southern Cross, while British Servicemen meeting the Aus- tralian soldier in
Palestine and the West- ern deserti continue io speak admlringlv of his
fighting and thirsting and extra- ordinary skill in tossing pennies.
So it is high time that English brides
received some instruction on how to live with an Australian mother-in-law.
The Information Bureau will outline
Australian geographical and political de- tails in its booklet, give advice on
clothes and climate, education, maternity endowments, and social services. Housekeeping hints will be given,
with notes on cookery, rationing. sports, and entertainments. '
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