Australian English vocabulary

Many works giving an overview of Australian English have been published; many of these are humour books designed for tourists or as novelties. One of the first was Karl Lentzner's Dictionary of the Slang-English of Australia and of Some Mixed Languages in 1892. The first dictionary of based on historical principles that covered Australian English was E. E. Morris's Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages (1898). Af... more

Many works giving an overview of Australian English have been published; many of these are humour books designed for tourists or as novelties. One of the first was Karl Lentzner's Dictionary of the Slang-English of Australia and of Some Mixed Languages in 1892. The first dictionary of based on historical principles that covered Australian English was E. E. Morris's Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words, Phrases and Usages (1898). After a long period of disinterest and antipathy, the first synchronic dictionaries of Australian English began to appear. In 1976 , the Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary was published, the first dictionary edited and published in Australia. In 1981, the more comprehensive Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English was published, after 10 years of research and planning. Updated editions have been published since and the Macquarie Dictionary is widely regarded as authoritative. Oxford University Press also publishes a range of dictionaries of... less