When we use Old Aussie we might call a bloke a ‘cove’ – but why? Why is an adult male likened to a coastal inlet? The answer is: he’s not. The two ‘coves’ here are homonyms – different words with different histories that (quite accidentally) are spelled and spoken the same. The coastal inlet ‘cove’ goes all the way back to the Germanic sources of Old English, while adult male ‘cove’ came to Australia as a convict slang word. It’s recorded by convict lexicographer James Hardy Vaux in his dictionary of the Flash Language. Here’s his definition of a ‘cove’: ‘the master of a house or shop, is called the Cove; on other occasions, when joined to particular words, as a cross-cove, a flash-cove, a leary-cove, etc., it simply implies a man of these several descriptions…’. To begin with the ‘cove’ was the boss, but then (in egalitarian Australia) the word came to mean everyman. As to origin, the Oxford suggests it may have grown out of a Scots word, adding (in a slightly sniffy way): ‘save that cove belongs to a lower and more slangy stratum of speech’. If you’d like to know more about the many words convicts have contributed to the Australian language, I have told the remarkable story of James Hardy Vaux and his dictionary in my book Flash Jim (HarperCollins, 2021).

Speaking on his Outsiders show on Sky News our esteemed editor appears to have coined a new word: ‘pro-Semitic’. He proposed this as the best label for someone who opposes anti-Semitism. And it appears to be his original coinage – not found in the Oxford, Cambridge, Merriam-Webster Unabridged or the Macquarie. The Oxford (and only the Oxford) records the rare word ‘pro-Semitism’ appearing (only occasionally) since 1900. But it was coined and used as a derogatory term for Zionists. And the meaning of our editor’s new word ‘pro-Semitism’ is the opposite of that. I think it’s an excellent word that says, ‘I stand with the Jews.’ And as long as our government is slow, and reluctant, to say they stand with the Jews, and oppose anti-Semitic hatred of Jews, then we have to take a stand. And now we have the word to say it – we are ‘pro-Semitic.’

On the subject of new words – our editor doesn’t have this on his own. I have also coined a new word: ‘Austrophile’. Inspired by Andrew Bolt’s insight that members of the Albanese government are reluctant to defend Australia because they don’t love Australia, I coined this word to name those of us who do. Built along the same lines as established words such as Francophile and Anglophile, ‘Austrophile’ has the same slightly odd mixture of a Latin stem with a Greek root. But if that works for the French and the English it can work for us! And it generates its own antonym. For those angry mobs who object to the Australian flag and call us all racists, we can now call them ‘Austrophobes’. For those who love Australia’s values as much as they love our landscape, and who love our history as much as they love our distinctive language, we now have a word – we are ‘Austrophiles’. And proud of it!