**The Australian National Dictionary Saved at the Last Minute, But Its Future Remains Uncertain**
The Australian National University (ANU) had announced plans to cease publication of the third edition of the Australian National Dictionary (AND) to save money. However, thanks to an anonymous donor stepping in just five minutes to midnight on Thursday, the dictionary now has two more years of funding.
I spoke to Professor Kate Burridge, a linguistics expert from Monash University, who remains a critic of ANU for not fully backing the project in the first place and still fears for its future.
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**Fitz:** Professor, let’s take it from the top. What is the background to the Australian National Dictionary (AND) and why is it so important for us as a nation?
**Kate Burridge (KB):** Well, it is modelled on the Oxford English Dictionary and is much more than just a dictionary. It tracks words and meanings over time, specifically those that are distinctively Australian. The Oxford English Dictionary was conceived in 1857, with the full first edition completed in 1928. Around half a century later, work began on an Australian version, with the first edition published in 1988: *The Australian National Dictionary: A Dictionary of Australianisms on Historical Principles.*
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**Fitz:** So part of the idea is to have a standardised version of our everyday language and put it in historical context so it’s documented where and when words and phrases were first used?
**KB:** Not quite. The AND is not a general-purpose dictionary of all words but a record of words that reflect Australian history, culture, and identity. A great work like this was a real turning point in the history of Australian English. It marked when we could say the language stopped being just a kind of English spoken in Australia and became Australian English. We no longer had to ask Britain who we were when it came to language.
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**Fitz:** You bloody beauty. How far the language has come—from the colonial days when it was derided by, and I choose my words carefully, toffee-nosed Pommy dickheads, as the base language of English thieves and crude, misshapen, and careless.
**KB:** Yes, our language is a source of pride and affection. We celebrate the expressions that embody our distinct voice. Documenting their evolution and putting those words into historical context by publishing the dictionary is exactly what the ANU is funded for and should be supporting. Part of its founding charter is to engage in nation-building exercises and to strengthen Australia’s shared identity. The second edition came out in 2016, and the third edition is due soon.
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**Fitz:** Some will say, though, “What do I care about these university wankers carrying on? Why is this important?” What is your answer?
**KB:** Language is important. Our words are windows into the way Australians have lived, worked, and thought. Every major variety of English deserves a record of its own. For us, that’s the AND. To lose that record would be to lose part of ourselves.
The value of tracking changes in Australian English over time is enormous, of historic importance, and beloved by the wider public who adore words. The AND is more than an academic resource—its insights inform media, education, and everyday life. You need it for government style manuals, historians, researchers, and linguists.
And, you know, before every November when the AND announces its *Word of the Year* rollout—**democracy sausage**, **teal**—there’s great excitement, trumpet blasts, and fanfare. Words are the rock stars of linguistics. They’re important, and they say a lot about our identity.
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**Fitz:** An identity that, as previous editions prove, is nothing if not colourful?
**KB:** Yes. What’s also interesting about this dictionary is that right from the start, it never branded words in the same way other dictionaries do, giving them labels like “colloquial,” “vulgar,” or “informal.” The editors have always maintained that this kind of sensitive handling is over-restrictive for Australian English.
A deep love affair with vernacular language has meant the lines between informal and formal have always been very fuzzy in Australia.
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**Fitz:** Interestingly, there is a fraternity between dictionaries, and the Oxford English Dictionary people have themselves put money towards the AND?
**KB:** Yes, the Centre works closely with Oxford University Press to produce many Oxford dictionaries, including *The Australian Oxford Dictionary* and *The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary.*
Not only that, the OED draws on the AND for Australian vocabulary and Australianisms. Contributions include pretty boisterous slang, too, like *no wuckers* and *no wucking furries.* To lose that record would be to lose part of ourselves.
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**Fitz:** I confess a little shock. So *no wucking furries*, which turns into something much more vulgar if you swap the first letters of the second and third words, is correct English—or at least recognised as a phrase in wide use including in Britain?
**KB:** Yes. And that’s how it is these days. Slanguage is breaking into dictionaries faster than ever before. As I said, Australia was always very fond of the vernacular—and the in-crowd is now catching up with us!
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**Fitz:** As a matter of interest, despite you being from Melbourne, do you understand quintessentially Sydney phrases like, “he shot through like a Bondi tram,” or “she’s got more front than the Hordern Pavilion?”
**KB:** Of course. And with a lot of these expressions, it’s a bit like pouring new wine into old bottles. There’s a framework, and we just update it with new idiom—and that evolution is all recorded in the AND.
I love the way we reinvent slang. So the *fair go* of the 1800s becomes the *fair crack of the whip*, becomes the *fair suck of the sauce bottle,* or if you want to be polite, the *fair shake of the sauce bottle*, or the *fair suck of the Siberian sandshoe,* or *fair bite of the pineapple doughnut,* or even the *fair suck of the raw prawn* (a gorgeous turn of phrase that conflates two Australian English expressions).
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**Fitz:** In a piece you co-authored in *The Conversation,* you quote linguist Sidney J. Baker saying that the pages of the AND sing with the words and phrases of boundary riders, larrikins, sundowners, fizgigs, diggers, and other dinkum Aussies. Is that right?
**KB:** Yes, and you have to imagine all that went into that giant melting pot in those early days to forge the new colonial vernacular.
Into the mix were words from Indigenous languages. For example, *hard yakka* derives from a word used by the Yagara people of southern Queensland, *yaga*, meaning hard work or labour. That was added to the slang and colloquial language of whalers, sailors, jackaroos, gold diggers—plus, obviously, a big dollop of convict slang also went in there.
And a lot of those convict slang words still exist.
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**Fitz:** Which ones, particularly?
**KB:** Well, there’s *grub* (food), *stink* (uproar), *croak* (die). And *bloody* is another good example.
*Bloody* took on special significance in Australia because it was part of underworld slang, and it became known as the “great Australian adjective.” This helps explain its downfall.
It wasn’t considered an obscenity early on. It was just an adjective from the word *blood* (as in bloody murder). But its colourful associations of bloodshed and murder made it a very suitable intensifying word.
It then fell from grace because people considered it to be blasphemous or profane.
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**Fitz:** And yet, sadly, I would argue that its usage has now fallen away from wide use as a favourite adjective—as, at least in the vulgar circles I move in, it’s been replaced by variations of the word “f-”.
I’d also argue that the fact I even feel comfortable saying that word out loud to an eminent professor—and I don’t think I would have done that 20 years ago—is either an indication of my own baseness or that “f-” is in such common use it has lost all power to shock.
**KB:** [Laughing] Oh, most certainly.
There are a number of things going on here. One is that we are all more laid back, and colloquial language is appearing like it never has before.
When Keith Allan and I started working in the 1990s on bad language, we had a lot of trouble getting our work published because journals and publishers didn’t want to offend.
Now, there’s no problem. We can hear that word even when we turn on the television. It’s everywhere. Unedited, colloquial, scruffy language is going public much more than ever before, and audiences are quite receptive.
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**Fitz:** Therefore, Professor, will you join me in saying it out loud? Is it *f-ing* outrageous that the Australian National University had suddenly pulled the pin on this third edition of the dictionary, only for a two-year reprieve at the last minute?
**KB:** Well, I think it is.
We should all be grateful for the donor’s generous support. But temporary philanthropy is no substitute for the university’s responsibility to safeguard something of such significance. This is important work.
The value of tracking changes in Australian English over time is enormous: to the public, to government style manuals, historians, and other researchers (linguists like me).
It’s a labour that secures for us not just the words of today, but the living story of Australian English itself.
And the thing is—you’ve got to remember the ANU gets a very large annual National Institutes Grant (to the tune of $220 million, I understand), precisely to look after national assets and to protect things of special significance like the AND—which is nothing less than a monument to our language.
The phrase “cultural vandalism” has been bandied about a lot lately to describe the ANU’s decision.
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**Fitz:** So if it does fold, despite the generous donation to keep it alive for the moment, what happens to all the work that’s been done since the last edition nine years ago?
**KB:** It will be lost. And once it’s gone, we lose this living record of our national voice.
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**Fitz:** That’s shocking. Is it a victim of what I call the “rising damp of Coca-Colonisation,” whereby, because so many Australians are immersed in Americana, the Americanisms are overflowing into ours and killing off a lot of our darlings, so there is no further need to go to such effort to record ours?
**KB:** Not at all.
If anything, it is more a victim of the American-style managerialism that has taken over our universities—an approach to management that puts short-term cost-efficiency over enduring scholarly value.
I imagine the Australian National Dictionary Centre would be regarded as low-hanging fruit.
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The future of the Australian National Dictionary may have been temporarily secured, but the struggle to preserve this vital record of Australia’s unique linguistic identity is far from over. As Professor Burridge argues, the AND represents not just a dictionary but a living monument to Australian culture, history, and identity—one that deserves far greater support than fleeting philanthropy can provide.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/no-wucking-furries-how-our-national-dictionary-was-saved-for-now-20250918-p5mw0c.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed
