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(Top) 1 Flora and fauna 2 Environment 3 Aboriginal culture 4 Describing words 5 Place names 6 Names 7 English words often falsely assumed to be of Australian Aboriginal origin 8 References 9 Further reading

List of English words of Australian Aboriginal origin

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This is a list of English words derived from Australian Aboriginal languages. Some are restricted to Australian English as a whole or to certain regions of the country. Others, such as kangaroo and boomerang, have become widely used in other varieties of English, and some have been borrowed into other languages beyond English.

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (August 2008)

Flora and fauna[edit]

ballart

barramundi^[1]

coolabah^[1]

kangaroo^[2]

waratah^[1]

Environment[edit]

billabong

bombora (rapids–often used to describe offshore reef breaks)

boondie (hardened clump of sand; Noongar, W.A.^[3])

gilgai

lerp (crystallized honeydew produced by larvae of psyllid bugs, gathered as food)

min-min lights (ground-level lights of uncertain origin sometimes seen in remote rural Australia)

willy willy (dust devil)

Aboriginal culture[edit]

alcheringa

bingy (pron. binji)^[4] belly, esp. in bingy-button=navel

boomerang

bunyip^[4]

coolamon (wooden curved bowl used to carry food or baby)

corroboree

dilli (a bag)^[4] commonly, and tautologically, as "dilly-bag"

djanga

gibber (a stone)^[4] esp. in gibber plain=stony desert

gin (now a racially offensive word for an Aboriginal woman)

gunyah

humpy (a hut)

kurdaitcha

lubra (now a racially offensive word for an Aboriginal woman)

marn grook

mia-mia (a hut)^[4]

nulla-nulla

turndun

waddy (a wooden club), earlier, any piece of wood^[4]

woggabaliri

woomera

wurlie or wurley^[4] - a hut

yabber or yabber-yabber (talk)^[4]

yakka (doing work of any kind)^[4]^[5]

Yara-ma-yha-who

Describing words[edit]

Koori - Aboriginal people from Victoria and New South Wales

cooee

Nunga - Aboriginal people from South Australia

Murri - Aboriginal people from Queensland

Noongar - Aboriginal people from southern Western Australia

Palawa - Aboriginal people from Tasmania

yarndi (slang term for marijuana)^[6]

Place names[edit]

Names[edit]

Kylie (Noongar word for "throwing stick")

English words often falsely assumed to be of Australian Aboriginal origin[edit]

bandicoot (from the Telugu, pandikokku a term originally referring to the unrelated bandicoot rat)^[7]

cockabully (from Māori kokopu)^[8]

cockatoo (from Malay)^[9]

didgeridoo (possibly from IrishorScottish Gaelic dúdaire duhordúdaire dúth [both /d̪u:d̪ɪrɪ d̪u:/] "black piper" or "native piper")

emu (from Arabic, via Portuguese, for large bird)

goanna (corruption of the Taíno iguana)

jabiru (from Tupi–Guarani via Spanish, originally referred to an American bird)

nullarbor (Latin for no tree)'^[10]

References[edit]

Slang - Australian Government Website

^ ^a ^b ^c "Learn English: Borrowed Indigenous Australian words". ABC Education. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 27 July 2018. Retrieved 3 April 2019.

^ "Australian slang - a story of Australian English". Government of Australia. Archived from the original on 7 March 2016. Retrieved 30 April 2017.

^ "The Perth Files: Bull ants, 'boondies', bogans and bore water". 13 April 2006.

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Edward Ellis Morris (1896). Morris's Dictionary of Australian Words.

^ "Learn English: Borrowed Indigenous Australian words". ABC Education. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 27 July 2018. Retrieved 3 April 2019.

^ "Yarndi within the community". Australian Drug Foundation. Retrieved 14 January 2019.

^ Satpathy, Sumanyu (30 September 2017). "A tea party with Topiwalla and Alice". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 19 June 2019.

^ Wassilieff, Maggy. "Cockabully". Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 24 September 2021.

^ J. Simpson; E. Weiner, eds. (1989). "cockatoo". Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-861186-8.

^ Macquarie Dictionary (2nd ed.). Macquarie University. 1991. p. 1220. ISBN 0-949757-63-2.

Further reading[edit]

For a list of words relating to with Australian Aboriginal language origins, see the Australian Aboriginal derivations category of wordsinWiktionary, the free dictionary.

Australian Aboriginal Words in English: their origin and meaning, Dixon, R.M.W., Moore, Bruce, Ramson, W.S., and Thomas, Mandy (2006), Oxford University Press, Melbourne, VIC, Australia. ISBN 9780195540734