Macquarie Dictionary Blog: Archives
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Army life
Apr 28, 2015 | 0 Comments
The first thing to attack in the army, as in any institution, was the food. There was the official iron rations, but there was also the joke Anzac wafer (modelled on vanilla wafer) described as a hard biscuit... Read more...
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Black humour in war
Apr 27, 2015 | 0 Comments
Even heroes and villains can be taken not so seriously in war. The cold footer and slacker are basic enough terms but deep thinker meaning ‘a person who enlisted late in the course of the war’ has that touch of amused mockery... Read more...
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Diggers and Mateship
Apr 24, 2015 | 0 Comments
The first specialised use of digger in Australian English was a reference to someone digging for gold in a goldfield and dates back to the 1850s gold rush in Victoria... Read more...
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Macquarie Dictionary adds WWI images to the online dictionary
Apr 23, 2015 | 0 Comments
Defining World War I in words and pictures
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli, we have started off our image collection with a selection from the wonderful photographic database of the Australian War Memorial.
More than 200 entries relating to World War I have been illustrated with more than 300 images from the Australian War Memorial’s collection, illustrating the Australian experience in WWI. Read more...
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Naming Gallipoli
Apr 23, 2015 | 0 Comments
The irony of ironies is that the name Gallipoli meant ‘beautiful city’ from the Ancient Greek kallos ‘beautiful’ and polis ‘city’. Locations needed to be identified in fine detail... Read more...
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A history of the Anzac name
Apr 22, 2015 | 0 Comments
The group of Australians and New Zealanders that were formed into a separate body of troops to join the expeditionary force on the Gallipoli Peninsula was initially called the Australasian Army Corps... Read more...
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Susan Butler on Mashable Australia talking about the skol vs scull debate
Apr 21, 2015 | 0 Comments
You can now scull/skol your beer in peace, as Australia's Macquarie Dictionary has confirmed you can use whichever spelling you please. Editor Susan Butler spoke to Mashable Australia to shed some light on what she calls the "tug of war". Read more...
The pub argument of the decade: Do you skol or scull a beer? | Jenni Ryall | Mashable Australia
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Do you skol or scull a beer?
Apr 20, 2015 | 3 Comments
It seems that when Tony Abbott downed a glass of beer in a Sydney pub, he triggered a discussion on the rights and wrongs of seeing our prime minister apparently encouraging binge drinking. A second conversation followed as to whether he had skolled or sculled his beer. Read more...
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Blue day
Apr 14, 2015 | 0 Comments
A contributor to the dictionary sent me some citations for a blue day which puzzled him because his first thought was that such a day was depressing but in the contexts given, it seemed to be cheerful. Read more...
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Just deserts or just desserts?
Apr 09, 2015 | 0 Comments
We had a celebratory cake yesterday that was called ‘mortal sin’, but was a mortal sin our just dessert? I suppose it is because of the confusion between one’s deserts (that which you deserve to receive) and one’s desserts (the yummy stuff that you eat after the main meal)... Read more...