Australian Slang
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Australian Slang trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Australian English has a habit of shortening anything it can and then adding an -o or an -ie, which is how a nation ends up eating brekkie, dodging mozzies and calling everyone mate. Linguists have counted thousands of these clipped forms, and they are only part of the story: the country's slang also draws on Aboriginal languages, British and Irish dialects, soldiers' talk from two world wars and a long tradition of rhymes. This quiz covers the words visitors hear first and the ones that puzzle them most. You will be asked what everyday expressions mean, where famous insults and nicknames came from, which states disagree about the name of a beer glass or a lunch meat, and how linguists classify the country's accents. It is written for travellers heading down under, expats decoding the office chat, Australians who want to test their own lingo, and trivia hosts who need a ready-made round. Every answer comes with a short explanation of the word's meaning or origin.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which word, Oxford's Word of the Year for 2013, was first recorded on an Australian internet forum in 2002?
Selfie
Selfie first appeared in a 2002 post on Dr Karl Kruszelnicki's science forum, where a man apologised for the focus of a photo showing the lip he split at a mate's 21st.
Q 02An Australian who says 'see you this arvo', a word first recorded in the 1920s, plans to meet at what time?
Afternoon
Afternoon is what 'arvo' abbreviates, and 'this arvo' is so common it is often squeezed further into 'sarvo'. The word follows the Australian habit of adding -o to a shortened word, as in journo.
Q 03Which beach item, called 'jandals' in New Zealand, do Australians mean when they talk about a pair of 'thongs'?
Flip-flops
Flip-flops are 'thongs' in Australia, where the word Americans use for skimpy underwear means a rubber sandal. New Zealand's 'jandal' began as a trademark built from 'Japanese sandals'.
Q 04The Australian invitation 'bring a plate', recorded since the 1920s, often baffles newcomers; what should guests take?
Food to share
Food to share is what the host expects, and an empty plate will not do. In earlier days the request was often 'ladies a plate', sometimes followed by 'gentlemen a donation'.
Q 05Which Australian insult for a fool is traced to a 1920s racehorse that never won in 37 starts?
Drongo
Drongo the horse ran second in a VRC Derby yet never won a race. After he retired, racegoers used his name for unlucky horses, then for hopeless people and finally for fools.
Q 06Australians warn gullible tourists about the 'drop bear', a sharp-toothed imaginary version of which real animal?
Koala
Koala lookalikes with very sharp teeth, drop bears are said to fall from trees onto tourists. The first written record is from the 1980s, though the tale may date from the Second World War.
Q 07Which nickname for McDonald's is so widely used in Australia that the company has registered it as a trademark there?
Macca's
Macca's follows the Australian habit of clipping a name and adding a friendly ending, as in Salvos for the Salvation Army, a nickname that charity also uses officially.
Q 08Which Australian star's 1980s tourism adverts carried the greeting 'g'day' to television audiences around the world?
Paul Hogan
Paul Hogan fronted the campaign shortly before 'Crocodile Dundee' made him a film star. The greeting itself, a clipped 'good day', had been recorded in Australia since the 1880s.
Q 09In the 'chook raffles' held at Australian pubs and clubs, the prize is a ready-to-cook example of which bird?
Chicken
Chicken is what 'chook' means, a word that comes from the British dialect 'chuck' or 'chucky'. It was first recorded in Australia in 1855, spelt 'chuckey'.
Q 10Recorded since the late 1990s, the Australian term 'budgie smugglers' is a joke name for which item of men's clothing?
Swim briefs
Swim briefs earned the name from the look of the tight garment, 'budgie' being short for budgerigar, a small parrot. The phrase is probably a twist on the international 'grape smugglers'.
Q 11Which backyard structure, once emptied by a man who called regularly with a cart, do Australians call a 'dunny'?
A toilet
A toilet of any kind can now be a dunny, but the word first meant an outside one. It comes from the British dialect 'dunnekin', built from 'dung' and 'ken', an old word for a house.
Q 12Formed with the same '-o' ending as 'ambo' and 'garbo', what kind of roadside business is an Australian 'servo'?
Petrol station
Petrol station, or service station, is the meaning, clipped and given the '-o' ending Australians add to so many words. The same pattern turns a musician into a 'muso' and a journalist into a 'journo'.
Q 13Once the name for a mobile collector of used bottles, 'bottle-o' now means which kind of Australian shop?
Q 21Which Australian word for a false rumour comes from the name on water carts that served First World War army camps?
Furphy
Furphy was the name on carts made by J. Furphy & Sons of Shepparton, Victoria. The word probably spread from Melbourne's Broadmeadows camp, where soldiers gossiped around the carts, and was on record by 1915.
Q 22Which prime minister's name became Australian rhyming slang for a hasty exit after he vanished while swimming in 1967?
Harold Holt
Harold Holt disappeared, presumed drowned, at Portsea in Victoria, and to 'do a Harold Holt' is to bolt. The rhyming half is often dropped, so people also 'do a Harold' or 'do a Harry'.
Q 23Short for a two-word Biblical rhyme, what has an Australian surfer spotted when warning of a 'Noah' in the water?
A liquor store
A liquor store is known as a bottle shop in Australia, and 'bottle-o' is its clipped form. The older 'bottle-oh' was a mobile collector who gathered empties for return and re-use.
Q 14In Australian rhyming slang, a customer who asks for 'dead horse' on a meat pie wants which condiment?
Tomato sauce
Tomato sauce becomes 'dead horse' because 'horse' and 'sauce' rhyme in an Australian accent. Other home-grown rhymes include 'Barry Crocker' for a shocker and 'billy lid' for a kid.
Q 15Linked by one theory to a convict who lived 32 years among Aboriginal people, what does 'Buckley's chance' mean?
Almost no hope
Almost no hope is what William Buckley seemed to have when he fled Port Phillip in 1803. A rival theory points to the Melbourne firm Buckley and Nunn, as in 'two chances, Buckley's and none'.
Q 16An Australian 'ute', short for 'utility' and celebrated at rural gatherings called musters, is which kind of vehicle?
Pickup truck
Pickup truck is the nearest American term for a ute, a word first recorded in 1943. Ute musters hand out prizes in categories such as 'best street ute' and 'best feral ute'.
Q 17People from which Australian state are jokingly known as 'banana benders', a nickname first recorded in 1940?
Queensland
Queensland earned the nickname from the joke that its people spend their days putting the bends into bananas. Its southern border has been called the 'Banana curtain'.
Q 18Australian shoppers asking a sales assistant for 'manchester', a usage recorded since the 1840s, want which goods?
Household linen
Household linen took the name from 'Manchester wares', the cotton goods once made in the English city. London shop assistants are reputed to be baffled when Australians ask where to find it.
Q 19In Australian schoolyards, 'dobbing' on a classmate, from a verb first recorded in the 1950s, means doing what?
Informing on them
Informing on them breaks the Australian code of standing by your mates, so dobbing is widely frowned on. The verb probably comes from a British dialect word for throwing something down heavily.
Q 20Which lunchtime staple do Australians call a 'sanger', a word that took over from the 1940s form 'sango'?
A sandwich
A sandwich has been a sanger since the 1960s, and Australians happily order steak sangers, veggie sangers and even 'double banger sangers'.
A shark
A shark is a 'Noah' because Noah's ark rhymes with it, and as with much slang of this kind the rhyming half is left off. The usage is first recorded in the 1930s.
Q 24Which fruit, used by 1912 as rhyming slang for 'immigrant', is the likely source of the Australian nickname 'pom'?
Pomegranate
Pomegranate, also written 'Pommy Grant', replaced the older rhyme 'Jimmy Grant' as a jeering name for new arrivals. It was quickly clipped to 'pommy' and 'pom', which stuck to the British in particular.
Q 25Which Australian insult for an uncouth person went mainstream when TV schoolgirl Kylie Mole used it in the late 1980s?
Bogan
Bogan had been teenage slang before Kylie Mole, a character in 'The Comedy Company', made it widespread. A link to the Bogan River in New South Wales is often suggested but is far from certain.
Q 26Which Australian word for a likeable rule-breaker first described young street-gang hooligans in the 1860s?
Larrikin
Larrikin comes from a British dialect word for a mischievous youth, itself linked to 'larking about'. Only from the 1890s did it soften into praise for a good-hearted rough diamond.
Q 27Which nickname for an Australian soldier, first recorded in 1916, had earlier been used for miners on the goldfields?
Digger
Digger was applied to Australian and New Zealand troops in the First World War because so much of their time went on digging trenches. Wartime prime minister Billy Hughes was known as the Little Digger.
Q 28Which word for cheap wine probably began as Australian soldiers' First World War take on the French 'vin blanc'?
Plonk
Plonk seems to have grown out of 'van blonk', one of several soldiers' attempts at the phrase alongside 'plink-plonk' and 'point blank'. First recorded in 1919, it has since spread to other Englishes.
Q 29Linguists sort Australian accents into Broad, General and which third type, as spoken by actor Cate Blanchett?
Cultivated
Cultivated Australian was once the prestige accent and has some similarities to British Received Pronunciation. It has declined sharply, and Malcolm Fraser is cited as the last prime minister to use it in public life.
Q 30Australian police and governments use the label 'anti-hoon laws' for legislation aimed at which kind of people?
Reckless drivers
Reckless drivers have been 'hoons' only since the 1980s; from the 1930s the word meant a lout or show-off. New South Wales even put it in a statute title, the Car Hoons Act of 2008.