Dinkum Oil Reader’s Digest by Patrick Cook

Dinkum Oil

Meanings and Origins of Things Aussies and Kiwis Say

Drawings by Patrick Cook

Reader’s Digest

Reader’s Digest, 1979, ISBN 0909486727, lightly illustrated with line drawings in text, staple bound paperback

Good Condition, some edge and shelf wear, some rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, staining, marking and discolouration to covers, minor crumpling, no inscriptions (see photographs)

“The slang or colloquial element of any language is usually its liveliest and most colourful aspect.  It conveys a more vivid impression to describe someone as rough as bags or rough as guts rather than as uncouth, to refer to a busy worker as flat out as a lizard drinking, or to comment on an apparently demure girl that she knows more than her prayers.  Some kinds of advice are more forceful in colloquial idiom: get a bag! (to a cricketer who has dropped a catch), don’t get off your bike (to someone losing his temper), or pull your head in or don’t come the raw prawn (to someone being presumptuous).
These are terms which anyone but an Australian or New Zealander could have difficulty in understanding.  The common expression of farewell, see you later, has left at least one English visitor hanging about for hours, while the equally common hooray (taken as equivalent to hurrah) has also caused some bewilderment.  The slang vocabularies of Australia and New Zealand do generally coincide, although occasional phrases like up the boo-eye and a box of birds would be more familiar to New Zealanders than Australians, and vice versa for expressions like galah session and to shoot through like a Bondi tram..”