Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 - 1954), Sunday 10 March 1912, page 9


Thc Australian "Slanguage "

Its Graces and Peculiarities

_ *

EXPOUNDED BY " TUCK "-FOR THE BENEFIT OF NEW ARRIVALS

"The Sunday Times" has been re-quested to turn its tame Dictionary Expert on to the task of assaying the every-day language the slangy type of Australian uses in communicating his thoughts to his cobbers. In other words, our correspondents re-quest us to publish a complete glos-sary of Australian slang words and their meanings.

This is somewhat a too strengthy task to complete tn one up, but I will endeavor, within the. short space allotted me, to give a short resume of the idioms (and their meanings)

which, the office boy and the horse editor use in dredging-up their pearls of wisdom.

This may be considered chiefly as an elementary effort, mainly pro- pounded for the use of immigrants. When the tribe of pommies, jimmygrants, and unregistered lime-juice lickers hears a native of the soilwho is a groper—refer to them in any of the following terms, a "bosh-ter," "bontodger," "bonza," "boshtering" or "bosker" bloke, he need not go sour and agitate his Lanca-shire clogs with the intention of kicking the spruiker of this chat in the "darby kell" because all these ex-pressions represent the dead limit of admiration.

If, on the other hand, the same person were to refer to him as "a dead nark," "Noah's Ark," "backer-andfiller," "twister," or "purple-imp (pimp), he would be perfectly jus-tified in getting in early with his brogans, or skate in with the hob-nail express, which is another way of saying that he ought to bog his "daisy roots," otherwise his "crabs" or "John Hunters" into the frame of the blighter that "poked mullock" at him.

If he should happen to have any relations with him, on giving them a "knockdown" to an Australian he should defer to his father as his "pot and pan," his mother as his "one another," and his sister as his "gentle blister." If he has any bro-thers, they are merely "peas-an'-fin-gers" named Bill and Jim.

Before he has been here long he will meet someone who will tell him the locality of a "rye-buck hash

joint," where he can get a "fair dinkum Deacon Skinner" for the modest sum of a "tray and a zack."

If he patronises that hostelry lt would be well for him to "get wise" to his table-mates' request to "rail-road the ema or the Fred Bluett np the Cain and Abel," or otberwfca he would he taken for a new chum. And if the same person informs him con-fidentially that the "strflce-me-dead is dead stale and a year old," he would be wise to acquiesce grace-fully.

If some good-natured "dirty stopout" bails him up In the street, and^

asks him to "breast the jump" in the adjacent "rub-a-dub" or "nrtmy." abd have a pot of "Oh my" or "gay and frisk," bte own sense of pro-portion ought to enable him to. fathom that enigma.

When be has become acclimatised, and has learned a few points and has been put wise.to some of the "jokes" of "Kenso" and "Bick," in. which the "tommy-rook" and his "after-dark," after coHeeting his ? poultice of Broken Hill, £$VB -each other the "tick-tack" and "break

evens in the guy-away stakes," he may consider himself a "iisard " no longer, and one who is fit to "take tickets" with the swiftest gun who ever put the. left barrel in at an Os-borne Park pigeon ramp.

'n'ben he has been here a bit lon-ger, he will drop his native dialect, "do his dash" and "lose his block" over a "tom tart," who will "turn him down and go sour" on him, which tragedy he will relate some-

what as follows :

"When I first met 'er she was stew slingin' at the Slobber an' Slush 'Ash joint, and she aster look after me pretty well. Every" time .I'd "get snick she'd 'come to light' with a bonza junk of grilled bull-half raw -wot. 'nd square me. irp a treat.

"Me an' 'er was trackin' on the dead-sanare stakes, and I tell you fair jorriek I meant to make a honest

woman of 'er."

j "Well, why didn't yer?" puts in

the recipient of his confidence.

! "Bleep yer castanets shut, and rn

j try and make yer wise."" Then be I goes on with the yarn :

"We was get tin' on dead to rights

j until a sore-eyed finger from the

goldfields prats 'ees frame in an' then I takes a jerry that me cake's

dough."

" 'Ow did it happen?" inquired the

other.

"I chats th/2 tom that I'll take 'ei to the flicker-joint, an' gits mesell up the glassy, an' 'ops up the field-o'wheat to meet ber. When I gits fcc the Johimy-orner I sees her paddon up the frog-an'-toad with the gold-fields peanut who's a 'ead in a rag

j joint. They don't screw me, an' 1

git os their 'anuner-an'-tack, to th« pitcher-piotcli. When they git then they stall in an' do a bunk for tb*

brief box.

"Bixneby I sees 'im with his fir« alarm aro and her kiss~n_d-taste, an I traça In me body.

" ' What sorter cow are. you ti 'arf-inch a bloke's twist-an'-twirl?'

sea.

" 'Be's a burly, an' I'm tetescopii

'im oater my left mince.

" The tom goes to mark**, ar reckons she's never seen me dial i;

her natch.

"Then the cove tries to hand me king hit with his dirty left, an*

gets a jolt on to his kisser wot shut 'ees north-an'-scyöi.

"The trump come to, light, an*

do a stall down the apple-an'-pear¡ -an' gft dead moler. Then a Joh claims me, an' I wake up next da

r in the boob.

"The whole job cost me a poultic

zn' I done me collar."

Trusting that the foregoing wi bare the effect of throwing mac light upon an obscure subject, tb office Rhodes Scholar retires to del's into erudite tomes of theology, tw<

up, fish-shop Greek, and tin-mil

Frvneh.