Digger slang, also known as ANZAC slang or Australian military slang, is Australian English slang as employed by the various Australian armed forces throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. There have been three major sources of the slang: the First World War, the Second World War, and the Korean War and Vietnam War. The name Digger slang derives from the cultural stereotype of the Digger in the First World War. Graham Seal AM, Professor of Folklore at Curtin University of Technology, calls the slang Diggerese. It is a combination of an occupational jargon and an in-group argot.
Read more about Digger Slang: First World War, Second World War, Korean and Vietnam Wars, Modern Operations
Famous quotes containing the word slang:
“It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)