I have seen bags labeled “crib bags” on Australian websites. I never really understand what they are precisely or whether “crib” refers to the material or the shape of the bag. It seems the bags that fall under this category range from satchels, to tool bags, to carryalls (holdalls in BrE.) For example this site … Read more
Take this example from the Airbnb website: “What would have made this listing a better value?” This souds absolutely horrible and incorrect to my Australian ears (I would omit the “a”). I’ve also noticed this quite frequently watching Youtube videos with presenters from USA and Canada. In the only related question I found, respondees (presumably … Read more
After coming across the following questions, Origin of “All right, what’s all this, then?!” and Origin of “Well, well, well. What do we have here?”, my curiosity was piqued to try and discover the origins of "it’s a fair cop". According to the Urban Dictionary, it’s a phrase roughly meaning "Eh, I guess it’s fair." … Read more
I am learning accents (differences in pronunciation), and I was wondering how to pronounce the word “array” in Australian English, and how it’s pronounced in other variants of the language. Is it AH-ray or uh-ray, and which variant does the other belong to? Answer Australian Oxford Dictionary (2nd ed.) has /əˈreɪ/, which is the usual … Read more
In an answer to the recent question, What is the American equivalent of a "backie"? site participant Chappo notes that in Australia the word dink is sometimes used as a noun to mean "a lift on a bicycle" and the verb dink can mean "carry a person on a bicycle" (both definitions provided by Oxford … Read more
So I’ve looked up the word “software” around, and I’ve learned that -ware words are uncountable, and there’s even a claim at the Wiktionary entry for this word that “a software” or “softwares” are a non-native thing. Which makes sense, other languages have countable words that would translate better to “program” or “app,” but also … Read more
This was a question posed by a friend. I’m myself curious of the answer. I apologize for the explicit content (I left it as is to remove ambiguity). I pretty sure that ‘a yuppy fu@k’ is a compound noun in the local slang, but I’m not sure, just like the author of the question, of … Read more
In this video at 1:43, Ray (the guy on the right), says something like: "And if I ever hear you having your eyes lifted or something done to your chin I’ll be up you for the rent too by the way." I can perfectly understand the first part of his statement, but the second one … Read more
I got my assessment back on Friday, and my teacher said I need to work on metalanguage and sentence structure. I don’t understand what she means. I have looked on the internet for past 20 minutes about metalanguage but cannot seem to get my head around it. Can someone please elaborate? Thanks! Here is one … Read more
There is a pejorative phrase in the United States for country hicks that has recently arisen: ‘murica Implying that that user of the phrase doesn’t pronounce their words properly and doesn’t care. Specifically it denotes people who are carefree about their appearance and behaviour, who don’t live in the coastal states and are unworried about … Read more
