Right, i am now getting sick of it. LOL

Everywhere i go be it at work, shopping, watching TV, listening to the radio, i hear aussies saying... OOORUUUU all the time!!! :curse:
I think its soem form of goodbye gesture, but what does it mean and where the bloody hell did it come from?

Havent heard that, will have to keep my ear out.
I like it when I say 'hello', not 'how you going' to be answered with 'good thanks'

LOL.. automated responses!

Strange you have not heard OOORUUU. So far today i have heard Travis on BB say it twice. Don Burke on 2UE radio said it to nearly every caller this afternoon and a work colleague has started saying it to me nearly every day this week!!

Where did this come from and what does it mean?

I'll be all ears tomorrow & report back

It's the sound they make as their dummys fall out and land in the dirt.

...

A few years back Don Burke had a tv gardening come cooking show in which it was his signature sign off... I suspect Don or a drunken/misguided ancestor invented it

Have to say that's a very kiwi thing as well

Yeah, i remember Burkes Backyard but dont remember him saying it back then. It just seems all of a sudden i am hearing aussies repeating everywhere just recently.

Yes I know that saying well! Also round here they say hurray, I first heard it when leaving my uncles house after visiting him! I thought he was pleased me and my 3 kids were leaving!

It is a gesture like goodbye I think, anyway now when people visit us and leave my kids shout HURRAY like you would when you are happy someone has left, they think it is funny! LOL

Nikki

PMSL - look forward to using that excuse next time the MIL leaves.

Oh Don definitely did say it at the end of every show, but like you I never really noticed it's use much until recently. Our TT channel 7 presenter says it all the time. I have to say most Aussies I've met do not use it.

I just asked my Aussie friend and she found this explanation. So mystery, solved Nikki was correct!




Hooroo is a distinctively Australian way of saying “goodbye”.


Only in Australia did “hooray” come to mean “goodbye”
It’s so distinctive to us that you’ll find it in the Macquarie, The Australian National Dictionary and the Australian Oxford but it’s missing from the full Oxford English Dictionary and from Webster’s. Hooroo is first recorded in The Bulletin in 1906 in the expression “Hooroo. See yer termorrer.” It’s based on the earlier expression “hooray” – also used in Australia (but only here) to mean “goodbye”. This is first recoded in The Bulletin in 1898 with the following explanation: “In many places the salutation ‘good-day’ or ‘good-night’ is simply ‘Hooray!’” “Hurrah” or “Hurray” is, of course, a general shout or cheer and goes back to at least to the 17th century. Only in Australia did “hooray” come to mean “goodbye” – and only here was “hooray” changed to become hooroo. And according the ABC’s Word Map the “H” is often dropped and it becomes simply ‘ooroo!

And there was me, thinking that one very good bonus of moving to Australia meant I didn't have to learn a new language
Better add the hooroo/hooray/oorruu to the mental dictionary.
Sammy