Bronzed Aussie sporting phrases are worth their weight in gold to lexicographers, who are calling on the public to boost the nation's tally of noteworthy slang ahead of the Olympic Games.
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The Australian National Dictionary Centre is running its annual word appeal, and senior researcher Mark Gwynn said it had adopted sport as the theme to coincide with the world's biggest sporting event.
"We will certainly have our ears open for new terms come Friday, when the Olympics start," he said.
While much of Australia's sporting lexicon is linked to homegrown sport, we do have a track record with Olympics-linked phrases.
"I've got a feeling that the chant, 'Aussie, Aussie Aussie, oi, oi, oi', began around the Barcelona Olympics, and there's also evidence that the verb 'to podium', as in to get on the podium in second or third place, came from Australian sources," Mr Gwynn said.
"The term to 'do a Bradbury' is a classic and still used to describe a come-from-behind win," he said, in reference to speed skater Steven Bradbury's remarkable win at the 2002 Winter Olympics.
The centre, based at Australian National University, uses the word appeal to add to its collection of homegrown words and their origins.
"Some people might not realise that common Australian words and expressions such as 'drongo', 'home and hosed', 'sledge', 'fang it', and 'no-hoper' originate in the sporting world," Mr Gywnn said.
"These terms could be anything from types of tackles and kicks, like 'chicken-wing tackle' or 'mongrel punt', to words used in backyard sports like 'tippy-go' or 'six-and-out' in cricket."
The centre's process was different to standard dictionaries, he said.
"We're really interested in the whole history of the word, so we try to find the earliest example of it and then we'll give you quotations for every decade," he said.
Words and phrases submitted to the centre, via the "word box" on its website, are checked by researchers.
"Contributions from the public are a very important way of alerting us to new words, or words that may've been overlooked in the past," Mr Gwynn said.
He noted there was a lot of rhyming slang in Australian sport - 'Scooby Doos' for the twos (reserve teams), and a 'sausage roll' for a goal - while many rhyming slang terms themselves are the names of sporting people.
"There's 'Wally Grout' for a shout, 'Bruce Reid' for a feed, 'Mal Meninga' for a finger. 'Five eight' is a very common one in the world of rugby, 'five eight' meaning 'mate'. 'Garry' Ablett for tablet. One of the more risque ones was 'Adrian Quist', who was a tennis player."
Asking to pick his 'Bradman' - or very best - etymological tale, Mr Gwynn nominates the story of drongo.
"A racehorse that was not too bad but never quite won one and the term 'drongo', that we still use today, emerged from that particular horse in the 1920s," he said.
"Another funny one I like is a term from the early 1950s, a 'Collingwood six-footer', because the club would claim their players were six foot, or six foot-plus, but everyone knew they were slightly shorter.
"And one of the football terms we've recorded is the 'Barassi line', which is this notional imaginary line that divides where AFL and rugby league are played, coined by historian Ian Turner after the great Ausisie rules player, Ron Barassi."
Australian Associated Press
