By 1913 the word had morphed into the term pom or pommie which can be used as both a term of affection or abuse.īetween 19, over a million Britons emigrated to Australia as part of the ‘populate or perish’ nation-building scheme following World War II. The closest word people could find to jimmygrant (other than immigrant or emigrant) was pomegranate and by 1912, both jimmygrant and pomegranate had come to mean an immigrant. Jimmygrant soon caught on as a slang word, but Australians couldn’t leave it at that and early last century started tinkering with the word some more. An immigrant, someone choosing Australia as a place to live, was playfully referred to as Jimmy Grant (or just jimmy). The tradition of Cockney rhyming slang is thought to have started in the mid-19th century as a code used by criminals to either confuse the police, or by salesmen and women to compare notes and confuse their customers.īy 1845 immigration was well established in Australia and people began playing with the word immigrant. Cockney is a dialect of the English language traditionally spoken by working-class Londoners but is particularly associated with London’s East End. There were also some creative twists to words, such as a gun referring to a fast shearer.Īn Australian version of Cockney rhyming slang also emerged as a popular and humorous way to form words, giving us ‘steak and kidney’ for Sydney and ‘Aristotle’ for bottle (of drink). Other words were borrowed from Aboriginal languages, such as the Darug word boomerang. For example, public in convict Australia meant provided by the government for the benefit of a penal colony. Many of our distinctively Australian words have come from regular English words that have been repurposed in a new context.
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