Inpidginous Vocab G
Do you find yourself lapsing into pidgin from time to time? God knows how long we've been here, trying to eat from the tree of knowledge and then falling from grace or from the Anglosphere. It may be time to consider a bit of a vocab overhaul and on the other hand some revision too.Give it a burl!
revision:
GOOG, AS FULL AS A : drunk. "Goog" is a variation of the northern English slangword "goggie" meaning an egg.
GET OFF AT REDFERN coitus interruptus, stopping sex before ejaculation: Even though the O'Conners have 7 kids, they still use getting off at Redfern as a form of contraception.
GALAH The word galah is a borrowing into Australian English from the Aboriginal Yuwaalaraay language of northern New South Wales. In early records it is variously spelt as galar, gillar, gulah, etc. It is first recorded in 1862 in J. McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia: `A vast number of gulahs, curellas, macaws... here'. The bird referred to is the grey-backed, pink-breasted cockatoo Eolophus roseicapillus, occurring in all parts of Australia except the extreme north-east and south-west. It is also known as the red-breasted cockatoo and rose-breasted cockatoo.
Some early settlers use the galah as food. In 1902 the Truth newspaper reports: 'The sunburnt residents of at that God-forsaken outpost of civilisation were subsisting on stewed galah and curried crow'. Some writers report that galah pie was a popular outback dish.
The galah, which usually appears in a large flock, has a raucous call, and it was perhaps this trait which produced the term galah session for a period allocated for private conversation, especially between women on isolated stations, over an outback radio network. F. Flynn in Northern Gateway (1963) writes: 'The women's radio hour, held regularly night and morning and referred to everywhere as the 'Galah Session'. It is a special time set aside for lonely station women to chat on whatever subject they like'. More generally, a galah session is 'a long chat' - A. Garve, Boomerang (1969): 'For hours the three men chatted... It was Dawes who said at last, "I reckon this galah session's gone on long enough".'
Very commonly in Australian English galah is used to refer to a fool or idiot.
GUERNSEY Guernsey is the second largest of the Channel Islands. The name is used attributively to designate things found in or associated with Guernsey. Thus the term Guernsey cow for an animal of a breed of usually brown and white dairy cattle that originated in Guernsey.
In the early nineteenth century the term Guernsey shirt arose for `a close-fitting woollen sweater, especially one worn by sailors'. 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 gold-miners:
From the football meaning there arose the phrase to get a guernsey or be given a guernsey, meaning to win selection for a sporting team. In a widening of this sense, the phrase came to mean 'to win selection, recognition, approbation', and is commonly used in non-sporting contexts:
new words:
GARAGE MAHAL n. A large or opulent garage or parking structure. Also: garage mahal, garage-mahal
GENERTION D n. The generation that has grown up with and is completely at home with digital devices and digital culture.
GOLDEN BUNGEE noun. A lucrative package paid to an executive that includes severance pay for leaving the company and cash, options, or some other incentive to remain associated with the company.
GREY NOMAD A retired person who travels extensively within Australia, esp. by campervan, caravan or motor home. Grey nomads generally travel with no particular schedule or date to return to their normal place of residence. ‘They’re back —thousands of them—trailing their Jaycos and Sunliners across the Tweed to squander their kids' inheritance on a fold-up chair next to a breezy Queensland beach. The grey nomad is now a feature of the natural world, like the movement of whales whose path they shadow up and down the east coast every winter.’ (Courier-Mail 19 July 2005). The grey nomad is a product of the Baby Boomer generation. The term was first recorded 1995
No comments:
Post a Comment