Digger Slang - Second World War

Second World War

The second influence on Digger slang was Australia's involvement in the Second World War. Some of the soldiers who had fought in the First World War perpetuated Digger slang into the second. These "retreads" were fit enough to return to action and continued the use of terms such as "bint", "backsheesh" for money, "shoofti" for a look around (borrowed via British slang from Arabic), and "guts" for news and information.

Several slang words and phrases evolved. What in the First World War had been a "base bludger", someone who hangs around headquarters avoiding the fighting (from "bludger", a British slang name for a pimp, and generally adopted as the name for any form of layabout), became a "base walloper" (also known as "fountain pen fusilier"), for example. Similarly, several new slang words and phrases appeared. A "shiny arse" was someone with a desk job at headquarters, and a "blue pencil warrior" was a propagandist.

Many slang phrases were expressions of malcontent, such as "wouldn't it root ya?!", an expression of disgust, which came in many Bowdlerized variations, from "wouldn't it rotate yer?!" to "wouldn't it rot your socks?!". The shortened version of this, "wouldn't it?!" is still in use today. Anything thought to be nonsense was "a lot of cock" (sometimes "a lot of hot cock"). Something that was useless was "as much use as a cuntful of cold piss" (or "not worth a cuntful of cold water"), and a malfunctioning piece of equipment was "cactus" (originally 1940s RAAF slang, and briefly revived in the 1980s). Other Digger slang expressions involving complaint and error were "whinge", "balls-up", and "upter" (a contraction of "up to shit"). Food was called "afterbirth", a cook was a "bait layer", a quartermaster a "q bastard", and a sergeant's mess a "snake pit". Someone who wanted to "give the game to the blacks" was expressing unhappiness with the army or the war.

One significant source of slang were the prisoner of war camps run by the Japanese, where Diggers sometimes ended up. These were the sources of many particularly strong expressions, such as "white nip" for a prisoner who collaborated with the Japanese, and "japs", "nips", "jeeps", "little yellow men", and "little yellow bastards" for the Japanese themselves. In the camps, "kippers" were the British POWs, and "cheese-eaters" the Dutch. The urinals were "pissaphones" and the stew served to prisoners was "Danube", a contraction of the rhyming slang "Blue Danube".

There were many other Digger slang words and phrases coined during the Second World War. Two of the most notable are "wheelbarrow" for a conscript (because he had to be pushed) and "doover", a general name for just about anything at all. Others include "snarlers", who were soldiers from the Middle East who were "SNLR" ("Services No Longer Required") and sent home on "three P boats" (troopships that contained "pox, prisoners, and provosts").