Mind your language

PITHY put-downs can be insulting, but also deliciously funny and spot-on.

DURING that recent, unedifying scandal involving the UK's Barclays Bank and the fixing of Libor interest rates, former chief executive Bob Diamond's daughter, Nell, allegedly tweeted about two senior government figures: "George Osborne and Ed Miliband you can go ahead and HMD." Cue a torrent of internet chatter about what on earth she meant. "Hold my dick," actually. Charming.

And from a woman raised in the lap of luxury, educated at one of London's finest girls' schools and then one of America's most prestigious universities. Ah, the gobby young female of today with the world at her feet, the smorgasbord of social media spread before her.

The temptation to be so bolshy, loud, fast, raucous - and crude. (And so reduced by one unthinking tweet - Ms Diamond has since left her job as an analyst at Deutsche Bank.) It got me thinking about those particularly female sayings thrown over back fences all over Australia, sayings fast disappearing from our discourse. Those pithy little put-downs from our grandmothers, mothers, neighbours, aunts that are rapidly being leached from the lexicon. Insulting, yes, but often deliciously funny, spot on ... and never ugly. "She's as plain as a Sao biscuit." "He was behind the door when the looks were handed out." "He was such a busybody he wanted to know the ins and outs of a magpie's backside." "Not enough brains to give himself a headache."

"She was so annoyed she came down the path with her legs plaited." "He had a tongue so sharp it could cut a hedge." And in celebration of a particularly gorgeous baby: "He's off the Christmas tree, that one" (i.e., a bauble). Can't you just picture the Hills Hoist, the rollers in the hair, the quilted dressing gown? It's relatively easy to find the more masculine Aussie sayings, often involving body parts and functions and intense crudity, but these female ones are harder to come by. You have to ask, have to find the women who still remember them, still use them. The muscularity of our language! Bingle, tingle, shonky and squizz, bludger and wowser, clobber and togs. Oh, don't get me started.

When I lived in Alice, the local Aboriginal phrases took on a whole new level of deliciousness: "waterbeds" for the cops, because they went up and down, up and down the mall. "Lady in a boat" for grog, named after the Coolabah cask that had the woman in her white dress sitting in a boat.

And "whackfella" - a non-Aboriginal person who espouses an extremely earnest connection to the spirituality of Aboriginal people (they may or may not wear dreadlocks and/or play a didjeridoo) but whose interest is really only superficial - i.e., they're all for land rights but have little understanding of the political nuances behind it all. Just glorious.

I'm a regular magpie in terms of fabulously colourful local words. Scotland's another treasure trove for the mellifluous gorgeousness of its language. "Simmer dim," from the Shetland Isles: that time of no-darkness on a summer's night, the twilight loveliness around midnight that never deepens into a proper black. Smirr: a mist-like precipitation, a soft rain. Gurly: rough or boisterous. Galoot: idiot. Blutered: extremely drunk. Crabit: grumpy.

Then there's London street slang. Blud, meaning brother or sister or mate. Garms: clothing. Lush: good-looking. Wifey: girlfriend. Wicked: cool, but then so is sick. And everything bad is rubbish.

So what are the young Aussies of today bestowing upon our language? The word du jour in these parts: "owned". As in "you're owned, mum", as in "got the better of " (and it's happening far too much for my liking at the moment). So, dear reader, any phrases from times past that I can throw back at the little buggers are most welcome. Because many, so many, are just too delicious to have them disappear on us.

[e-mail]