Australia and the World Past and Present

Languages live and breathe. All the time words are dropping out of use and others are springing up like mushrooms. Here are some the new words that have popped up in Oz in the last few years. I confess that I hadn’t heard of quite of few of them. Perhaps I am getting older. New words often emerge in younger speakers. Here we go.

2024

Enshittification – the gradual deterioration of a service or product – especially an online platform. This was awarded word of the year by Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary. I like this one. It is one that I can relate to. I hate online platforms that are clunky, counter-intuitive and just plain don’t work for the user. Where is a human when you need one? And if you can reach one, what are they chances that they know the answer to your question? Where has customer service gone in retail? Down the tubes and towards enshittification.

Brainrot is the supposed deterioration of the brain or IQ from viewing large amounts of low-quality online material. This one will be relatable for many given how much people spend online these days. Scrolling endlessly and looking at videos of cute dogs and cats – is this a minute of our lives well spent? Are we maximising our time on this earth? The answer comes back, no, but we can’t turn away. Maybe this is the modern version of the ‘idiot box’ which was what our parents would call the television. The TV was also supposed to rot our brain or give us ‘square eyes’ if we spent too much time in front of it.

Cozzie livs

Another way of saying ‘cost of living’. I’m not a fan of this one. I hadn’t actually heard it before I started looking to write this piece. Something about the term jars in my ears. Perhaps it is because we sometimes use the word ‘cossie’ as a substitute for bathers. I just can’t make the jump.

Rawdogging – taking a long-distance flight but not engaging with any electronic entertainment. I love it. If you can do this in our day and age, full kudos to you. Take a book, chat with the person next to you or close your eyes and meditate or take a nap.

Social battery – your store of energy for social situations. Again, I love it. Instantly relatable to introverts. Many introverts, contrary to popular belief, love certain social situations but they have their limits. Like a whistling kettle when fully boiled. Monitor your social battery as much as you monitor the battery on your phone and it will serve you well.

Looksmaxxing – trying to improve one’s appearance – especially a guy’s. This grates on me in about three different ways. First, it smacks of vanity. Second, it has jammed two words together in an unholy combination. One might say ‘I am maximising my looks’ but this term inverts the whole thing. Also, too many double letters for me.

Rent bidding – offering a higher rent than advertised in the hope of getting the lease. A natural outgrowth of the housing squeeze in Australia and the difficulty people have in finding a place to rent. An unsurprising addition to the language.

Colesworth – the supermarket duopoly. The two big supermarket chains in Oz. There is a sense among many that these two dominate the market to an unfair degree and as a result paying high prices for the ‘cozzie livs’ is unavoidable. It is associated with the powers that be, an inescapable economic system, being taken for a ride and predatory pricing to the max.

Demure and brat – other words noted in 2024. Neither are new. I hadn’t detected a rise in the use of these words but apparently others had.

2023

Angry water – carbonated water. Fun.

Rizz – charisma. Not a fan of the new version. Seems cheap and tacky.

Bopo – body positivity. I prefer the two words over the mash-up. Just seems lazy.

2022

Teal – an independent candidate who campaigns strongly on the themes of climate change and integrity. This word popped up in the 2022 federal election in Oz where some Liberal pollies were replaced by these teal candidates. Some would question the use of the term ‘independent’ as they tended to target Liberal MPs rather than Labor ones and analysis of their voting patterns shows that they most often vote with Labor or the Greens.

Shrinkflation – a decrease in the size of a packaged item however the price doesn’t seem to go down. Put it together with other new terms to create ‘I feel like every time I go to Colesworth I see more examples of shrinkflation and it is affecting my cozzie livs’. Maybe this sums up the past few years for many Aussies.

Truth telling – not simply telling the truth. This term now has a political bent to it. It refers to a process, adopted by my state governments in Australia to hold inquiries into the colonial treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders and the extent to which colonialism still impacts on indigenous peoples.

Voice. With a capital V. Again, an already existing term has become imbued with another meaning. And again, it relates to Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders. It refers to the creation of body called the ‘Voice’ which would advise the Australian government or parliament (there was some ambiguity around this) on issues affecting indigenous Australians. A referendum on whether to insert such a body into Constitution took place in October 2023 and was ultimately unsuccessful.

Bachelor’s handbag – a takeaway chicken from the supermarket. A new term for my ears. But I get it.

2020

Doomscrolling – reading negative news feeds online. Not recommended. If you do it, please do so in moderation.

Karen – an entitled middle-class white woman. Known for complaining about ‘first-world’ problems.

Covid-specific phrases

Iso – isolation. Aussies love shortening things as much as possible.

Quazza – quarantine. I actually hadn’t hear this one. I’m not a fan. To me it sound like some guy’s name – maybe Quentin. Here’s a little fun fact for all you native English speakers outside of Australia. Sometimes we convert an r into z – especially for names. So, Barry becomes Bazza and Sharon becomes Shazza.

Social distancing – keeping your distance so that you don’t transfer Covid to another person. Humans are social animals. Keeping your distance doesn’t seem very social to me.

Flattening the curve. During Covid, the amount of infections was rising quickly and we weren’t sure that there would be enough hospital beds for serious cases so it was all about ‘flattening the curve’ – the bell curve of infections. Prior to Covid, the term wasn’t used and people wouldn’t have known what you were talking about.

I hope this helps you to understand us Aussies better. And it will help me to work out what those young ones are going on about.