There are plenty of words that are native to Australia and uttering them outside the confines of land girt by sea usually leads to a lot of raised eyebrows and confused looks.
I thought it would be pretty easy to decipher our shortened words like 'servo', 'bottlo' or even 'arvo', yet foreigners thought I was speaking a completely different language. To be fair, that is our language and we're all bloody proud of it.
But as our society evolves, so too does our vernacular, and words sometimes need to be updated to reflect this change. The term 'bogan' has been used in Australia and across the ditch in New Zealand since around the 1970s.
You know exactly what the word means without a dictionary - but it never hurts to have a proper description. According to the Age, flannos, ugg boots, footy shorts, Southern Cross tattoos, keys to a Ford Falcon or Holden Commodore and mullets are all key ingredients for achieving maximum boganness.
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This video takes the cake for the most Aussie interview of 2017.
Credit: Channel 9/Today Show
According to the experts at the Oxford Dictionary, the word previously meant: "A person who is regarded as being uncultured and unsophisticated, especially such a person from a low socio-economic or poorly educated background."
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However, times have changed and that definition feels slightly restrictive.
So, the good people in dictionaryland have decided to update it a bit: "An uncultured and unsophisticated person; a boorish and uncouth person."
My guess is that the alteration was due to the rising term 'cashed-up bogan', meaning that you could have money but still be uncultured or unsophisticated.
The word has rumoured origins in Melbourne's outer-west, however it was on everyone's lips in the 1980s after Mary-Anne Fahey's character in the TV sketch series The Comedy Company used it for anyone she didn't like.
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There are places across Australia named Bogan, including the Bogan River, Bogan Shire in central New South Wales as well as a rural village known as Bogan Gate. You'd be able to go anywhere in Australia and say the word and have people know what you mean, but there are variations of the term that are popular in different states.
Apparently people in Queensland use the word 'bevan' or 'bev', Canberra has 'booner', 'chigger' is Tasmanian and 'scozza' is used in Geelong.
The Oxford Dictionary also took the time to update or introduce new words, such as 'Anzackery', which means: "The promotion of the Anzac legend in ways that are perceived to be excessive or misguided."
And then there's a term I never thought existed: 'Kangatarian', which is someone who is a vegetarian but for whatever reason still eats Kangaroo.
They've also tried to keep up with the times and include 'Insta' and 'whatevs' for Instagram and whatever.
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Sources: The Age
Topics: Aussie, Australian News, Funny, Interesting, Australia