List of English words of Australian Aboriginal origin

This is a list of English words derived from Australian Aboriginal languages. Some are restricted to Australian English as a whole or to certain regions of the country. Others, such as kangaroo and boomerang, have become widely used in other varieties of English, and some have been borrowed into other languages beyond English.

Flora and fauna

Environment

billabong
bombora (rapids–often used to describe offshore reef breaks)
boondie (hardened clump of sand; Noongar, W.A.^[3])
gilgai
lerp (crystallized honeydew produced by larvae of psyllid bugs, gathered as food)
min-min lights (ground-level lights of uncertain origin sometimes seen in remote rural Australia)
willy willy (dust devil)

Aboriginal culture

alcheringa
bingy (pron. binji)^[4] belly, esp. in bingy-button=navel
boomerang
bunyip^[4]
coolamon (wooden curved bowl used to carry food or baby)
corroboree
dilli (a bag)^[4] commonly, and tautologically, as "dilly-bag"
djanga
gibber (a stone)^[4] esp. in gibber plain=stony desert
gin (now a racially offensive word for an Aboriginal woman)
gunyah
humpy (a hut)
kurdaitcha
lubra (now a racially offensive word for an Aboriginal woman)
marn grook
mia-mia (a hut)^[4]
nulla-nulla
turndun
waddy (a wooden club), earlier, any piece of wood^[4]
woggabaliri
woomera
wurlie or wurley^[4] - a hut
yabber or yabber-yabber (talk)^[4]
yakka (doing work of any kind)^[4]^[5]
Yara-ma-yha-who

Describing words

Koori - Aboriginal people from Victoria and New South Wales
cooee
Nunga - Aboriginal people from South Australia
Murri - Aboriginal people from Queensland
Noongar - Aboriginal people from southern Western Australia
Palawa - Aboriginal people from Tasmania
yarndi (slang term for marijuana)^[6]

Place names

Names

Kylie (Noongar word for "throwing stick")

English words often falsely assumed to be of Australian Aboriginal origin

bandicoot (from the Telugu, pandikokku a term originally referring to the unrelated bandicoot rat)^[7]
cockabully (from Māori kokopu)^[8]
cockatoo (from Malay)^[9]
didgeridoo (possibly from Irish or Scottish Gaelic dúdaire duh or dúdaire dúth [both /d̪u:d̪ɪrɪ d̪u:/] "black piper" or "native piper")
emu (from Arabic, via Portuguese, for large bird)
goanna (corruption of the Taíno iguana)
jabiru (from Tupi–Guarani via Spanish, originally referred to an American bird)
nullarbor (Latin for no tree)'^[10]

References

Slang - Australian Government Website

^ ^a ^b ^c "Learn English: Borrowed Indigenous Australian words". ABC Education. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 27 July 2018. Retrieved 3 April 2019.
^ "Australian slang - a story of Australian English". Government of Australia. Archived from the original on 7 March 2016. Retrieved 30 April 2017.
^ "The Perth Files: Bull ants, 'boondies', bogans and bore water". 13 April 2006.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Edward Ellis Morris (1896). Morris's Dictionary of Australian Words.
^ "Learn English: Borrowed Indigenous Australian words". ABC Education. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 27 July 2018. Retrieved 3 April 2019.
^ "Yarndi within the community". Australian Drug Foundation. Retrieved 14 January 2019.
^ Satpathy, Sumanyu (30 September 2017). "A tea party with Topiwalla and Alice". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 19 June 2019.
^ Wassilieff, Maggy. "Cockabully". Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 24 September 2021.
^ J. Simpson; E. Weiner, eds. (1989). "cockatoo". Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-861186-8.
^ Macquarie Dictionary (2nd ed.). Macquarie University. 1991. p. 1220. ISBN 0-949757-63-2.