What about "bindi-eyes" or "bindies" - do people still use that for burrs? And is the Salvation Army still "Salvos", in the local lingo? I sometimes call my son Ross-o, affectionately; which he counters with Dad-o.

Yep, bindies, Salvos and Vinnies for St Vincent De Paul.

You know how hot it gets here, the smaller words save our energy

My Canadian neighbour introduced me to the word "rando", yesterday. She was grumbling about a stranger hanging around in our street in a beat-up car; "rando" was short for "random", as in "random visitor".

Xmas greetings to all on the thread! Thanks for keeping my slang up to date. Blow me down, good on ya, and I hope youse all get some great Chrissie prezzies tomorrah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminu...lian_English#L Aha! I have only just this minute come across... [let me [i]finish, darlin'!}... this Wikipedia entry, which lists a whole bunch of -o endings in the Australian dialect. Excellent! It does miss out a few, but not many. One of the favourites in our house was "bimbye", a word used by little Australian children when attacked by an insect of some sort. "Marm! I been bimbye a 'pider". Linda and I always referred to an offending insect as a bimbye.

I was actually looking in Wikipedia for the name Afferbeck Lauder, a writer in the 1960s who published the classic book "Let Stalk Strine" - Strine being the way a great many Australians pronounced "Australian" - at the time, and still do. The author's pseudonym itself was an example of Strine. Any smart immigrant should be able to figure that out!

Sorry, only just saw your reply, old sparkles. I love that idea! Ferries before Facebook. Very plausible. I travelled on the ferries a few times as a teen to visit family in England. I definitely recall the seasickness if not the slang.

Firies is my favourite diminutive. Also like bushies (bush flies) but only the word, not the actual pest.

That's okay - I never visited Ireland, but my mum and Aunty did quite a few times.

I haven’t been back for 7.5 years. I’ll probably need an interpreter when I finally visit, I’m sure the slang has well and truly moved on

Some of the Australian papers seem to use "grub" a lot, for people who are sloppy or messy or nasty. In my early days in Oz, that word was used only for little children who got messy the way kids do. I wonder how the change came to be made, and why.

Happy New Year 2024 to you Gordon.
I so hope you were or will be able to see your son and also that you spent a little bit of convivial time.

I thought grubby always had that secondary meaning of distasteful or sordid. Easy to see the tabloidisation (!) of grub as someone of unsavoury character. It’s a word my FIL (in his late 70s) uses regularly. Usually about pollies!

Here's another slang puzzle for the barbie crowd. I once or twice heard my Dad, a lapsed Catholic, refer to an RC friend of his as a "left-footer". And I have a faint recollection of that term being used in a Northern Ireland context. Can anybody tell me its origin? Please.

https://www.theguardian.com/notesand...%20first%20war.