Thursday, May 29, 2025

OZ VERNACULAR

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CHUCK A WOBBLY:

Meaning:

To lose one's self-control in a fit of nerves, panic, temper, annoyance, or the like. ‘Chuck’ in this context means ‘throw’.

To chuck a wobbly is a variant of the Standard English idiom to throw a wobbly, where wobbly means ‘a fit of temper or panic’.

In Australian English chuck in the sense of ‘throw’ or ‘stage’ is used in other expressions with the same meaning, such as chuck a mental and chuck a mickey.

Chuck a wobbly is first recorded in 1986. In 1992 it appears in the record of a parliamentary debate in the Australian Senate, when one senator chastises another: ‘Stop chucking a wobbly, Senator Ray. Behave yourself. You will have a heart attack.’
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CHUCK, CHUNDER:

To vomit. Also used as noun for ‘vomit’.

Chunder possibly comes from a once-popular cartoon character, 'Chunder Loo of Akim Foo', drawn by Norman Lindsay for a series of boot polish advertisements in the early 1900s. 


It is possible that 'Chunder Loo' became rhyming slang for spew. Chunder, however, is the only form to be recorded. The earliest evidence is associated with Australian troops in action to the north of Australia during the Second World War.

Barry McKenzie in The Adventures of Barry McKenzie offers his explanation of the origin of ‘chunder’ before singing a song: that when convicts were being sent to Australia and were high up in the rigging, they would often get seasick and nauseous, yelling out to those below before throwing up “Watch under”.

His song:

Lyrics:

The Old Pacific Sea

I was down by Bondi Pier,
Drinkin' tubes of ice cold beer,
With a bucket full of prawns upon my knee,
When I swallowed the last prawn,
I had a technicolor yawn
and I chundered in the old Pacific Sea.

Drink it up, drink it up,
Crack another dozen tubes and prawns with me,
If you want to throw your voice,
Mate you won't have any choice,
But to chunder in the Old Pacific Sea.

I was sittin’ in the surf, when a mate of mine called Murf,
Asks if he can crack a tube or two with me.
The bastard barely swallowed it,
When he went for the big split,
And he chundered in the Old Pacific Sea.

Drink it up, drink it up,
Crack another dozen tubes and prawns with me,
If you want to throw your voice,
Mate you won't have any choice,
But to chunder in the Old Pacific Sea.

I've had liquid laughs in cars, and I've hurled from moving cars,
And I've chucked when and where it suited me.
But if I could choose the spot,
To regurgitate me lot,
Then I'd chunder in the Old Pacific Sea.

Drink it up, drink it up,
crack another dozen tubes and prawns with me,
If you want to throw your voice,
Mate you won't have any choice,
But to chunder in the Old Pacific Sea.

BTW:

"I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover", yeah

- Lyric from Land Down Under, Men at Work
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VERANDAH OVER THE TOY SHOP:

(Variant: verandah over the tool shed).

A man's large protruding belly; a ‘beer gut’.

This phrase is an allusion to toy shop in the sense ‘sexual wares’ (with reference to the male genitals). In standard English a verandah is ‘a roofed platform along the outside of a house, level with the ground floor’, but in Australia it also refers to the same kind of open-sided roofed structure over a shop or commercial building. The verandah is a significant architectural feature in Australia, developed from earliest date for shade, both under the varandah and to shield the windows from the sun. Although Australian shops now rarely have such verandahs, the phrase verandah over the toy shop is still current. It is first recorded in 1987.

1991 Australian Financial Review (Sydney) 10 September:

Santa training courses start in October—so pull out that red suit with the fur trimmings, and get accustomed to sticky fingers and wet patches on your knee. A small veranda over the toy shop probably wouldn't hurt either.

Ken Maynard drew marvellous cartoons in the strip The Ettamogah Mob, which featured the Ettamogah Pub with its bullnose corrugated iron verandah:


The Ettamogah Mob cartoons, an iconic series of weekly cartoons, were published in The Australasian Post for nearly 50 years until that publication closed in the early 2000s. As a boy, Ken would cycle around a water hole called Ettamogah, an Aboriginal word meaning 'place of good drink'. The pub, in his cartoons, had timber sloping with an old Chevy ute parked on top. According to Ken Maynard's Ettamogah cartoons, the 1927 Chevy truck washed up on top of the pub in the floods and none of the regulars could be bothered to get it down. Ettamogah spelt backwards and said fast actually says ‘’how you going, mate’’?

The pub has since been built in various locations, including Sydney in New South Wales, and Cunderdin in Western Australia.

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LONELY AS A BASTARD ON FATHERS DAY:

Phrase used to express unluckiness or unhappiness.

Earliest reference:

1958 Frank Hardy The Four-legged Lottery: ‘I’ve got about as much luck as a bastard on Father’s Day.’

From The Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts) of Sunday 5th July 1970—the Australian tennis player Ken Rosewall (born 1934) had been defeated at Wimbledon by the Australian tennis player John Newcombe (born 1944):

Rosewall, after losing to Rod Laver once in Boston, expressed the way he felt yesterday: “I felt like a bastard on Father’s Day,” he said that day.

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