A raft of beloved and quirky Aussie words and phrases have been added to the official Oxford English Dictionary (OED) this week as part of 600 new additions.
While some terms might be familiar, others will be new to many.
“Avo” as the shortened version of “avocado” was one of the June additions.
While apparently “avo” was first used in print in the US in the 1930s, it has been widely embraced by Aussies now for many years.
If you’ve ever referred to something being “as small as a bee’s d**k” well, you can be assured this is a now an official term included in the OED.
The entry shows that this is a true Aussie-ism with the earliest evidence for “bee’s d**k” in print is from 1988 in the Sydney Morning Herald.
For anyone with memories of the classic Aussie drinking game Goon of Fortune with a bag of cheap white wine attached to a hills hoist, the word “goon” has also been officially recognised.
The OED data shows the term was first printed in 1982 in the Sydney Morning Herald, and now not only refers to the bag the wine comes in, but the wine itself.
A lesser known Australian term added this month is the noun and adjective “Balanda”, which the OED describes as: “Chiefly Australian Aboriginal English.”
Heralding from the Northern Territory, it describes a white person or as a plural to describe white people collectively.
Other phrases and slang words invented or loved in Australia include “busy bees”, “bag of d***s” and “hit-out”.
The OED started life more than 150 years ago and today it has upwards of 500,000 words from 1000 years of the English language.
The team considers and adds new words to extend the OED at regular intervals, with this update being the second so far for 2025.
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