Crook means bad in a general sense, and also in more specific senses too: unwell or injured (a crook knee), and dishonest or illegal (he was accused of crook dealings). Menzies Afternoon Light: The Socialist objective, his 'light on the hill', must not be blotted out or obscured in this way.
In 1907 for example C.W. When you look through the list of 100 Australian Slang Words & Phrases, you’ll see a couple of slang words and phrases that relate to drinking alcohol. The -o form is often found at the ending of Australian nicknames, as in Johno, Jacko, and Robbo. The lateness of the word in Australian English, however, suggests a borrowing from the northern dialects rather than from Cornish. Any of the larger marsupials of the chiefly Australian family Macropodidae, with short forelimbs, a tail developed for support and balance, long feet and powerful hind limbs, enabling a swift, bounding motion. An earlier Australian sense of digger was ‘a miner digging for gold ’. The word is not much used in this sense now, but in 1982 Page & Ingpen in Aussie Battlers write: 'The average Australian's image of a battler does seem to be that of a Henry Lawson character: a bushie of the colonial era, complete with quart pot and swag, down on his luck but still resourceful and cheerful'. 1979 B. Humphries, Bazza Comes Into his Own: A lotta them beaches in Oz are full of Noahs. Bombora probably derives from the Aboriginal Sydney Language where it may have referred specifically to the current off Dobroyd Head, Port Jackson. For more on words related to wine drinking, see our blog ‘Wine in Australian English’. Goom itself may derive from a south-east Queensland Aboriginal word (from Gabi-gabi, Waga-waga, and Gureng-gureng) meaning ‘water, alcohol’. (In fact very few even came within cooee of that, mostly tapering off at five or six bucks per four litre 'goon'.). Morris in Austral English in 1898: 'A different origin was, however, given by an old resident of New South Wales, to a lady of the name Brumby, viz. II: Such of the .. public servants as might have taken to concealments on shore for the purpose of avoiding their work, or making their escape from the colony. Stoush was also used to refer to military engagement during the First World War, and later the phrase the big stoush was used of the war itself. 'Can't you get pinched for calling a man a bludger?' 1894 Oakleigh Leader (Melbourne) 29 December: He would avert direct taxation on wealth by retrenching all the low paid civil servants, while carefully protecting the tall poppies who have very little to do. Australia; Australian.
Whim-wham meaning 'an ornament' or ‘a trinket’ disappeared from the language in the nineteenth century and survived only in this phrase. However, things are crook in Tallarook is not recorded until the early 1940s. Click the answer to find similar crossword clues. More familiar is the use of bluey to describe a summons, especially for a traffic offence (originally printed on blue paper): Imagine my shock upon returning to a bluey at the end of the day. (adverb) 1914 B. Fighting; violence; a brawl or fight. Big-noting arose from the connection between flashing large sums of money about and showing off. 2015 Australian (Sydney) 6 February: One option would be to skip the spill motion and go directly to a call for candidates for the leadership. 1986 Sydney Morning Herald 1 February: Even though I was a nurse before I became an ambo, at first I thought, can I handle this?
1988 H. Reade You’ll Die Laughing: How stiff can you get? Bufflehead has disappeared from standard English, but survives in its Australian form boofhead. During the gold rushes in Australia in the mid nineteenth century, in a specialisation of this sense, the term guernsey was used to describe a kind of shirt worn by goldminers: 1852 F. Lancelot Australia as it Is: The usual male attire is a pair of common slop trowsers, a blue guernsey ... a broad-brimmed cabbage-tree hat. ... Cornelius Crowe in his Australian Slang Dictionary (1895) gives: ' Battlers broken-down backers of horses still sticking to the game'. Find the answer to the crossword clue Get very drunk, in slang. 1890 Bulletin (Sydney) 30 August: Did you ever take 'the wallaby' along some dreary track In the war newspaper Ack Ack News in 1942 we find: 'Who said our sappers are bludgers?'