Do you wear your cossie, swimmers or togs when you go to the beach?
And when you’re there, do you eat an icy pole, an iceblock or a by jingo?
Do you say peanut butter or peanut paste?
What does dink mean?

What is a regionalism?
It’s a word, phrase or expression used by a particular community in particular parts of the country. For instance, the prepared meat called devon in New South Wales is called Belgium sausage in Tasmania, Empire sausage in Newcastle, fritz in South Australia, polony in Western Australia, Windsor sausage in Queensland and German sausage or Strasburg in Victoria.

Australian Word Map is an interactive website that is recording Australian regionalisms into one big database. As yet, most of Australia’s regionalisms haven’t been documented, let alone included in Australian dictionaries. So ABC Online and Macquarie Dictionary have designed an interactive online project that will document this part of our oral history.

Be involved!
Help us create an Australian Word Map! So we can gather as many regionalisms as possible, we want you to send us your regionalisms. Participating is easy. Just visit the Add a Word link, add your regionalism and its definition or use Word Search to see what others have contributed.

Useful resource
The Word Map website will be a great resource for all Australians. Along with a ‘words database’ , it also features Top 10 Words of the Week, a special Schools Section containing Teachers’ Notes and Resources, competition details, an easy-to-use search function to find school entries, a guestbook, mailing list, forums and a link to the Macquarie Dictionary online.

Australian Word Map is a great opportunity to map, define and preserve Australian English. Your regionalism could be immortalised in print! Macquarie Dictionary will include some of the Word Map regionalisms in the fourth edition of their dictionary.

*The regional meaning of ‘dink’ is ‘to ride your bike with someone else on the back’.

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