In last week’s edition of The Speccie our esteemed editor repeated a widely believed urban myth about the origin of ‘chunder’ – the Aussie word for vomiting. The myth, embraced by many (including the brilliant Barry Humphries) is that it began as an old nautical expression: a courtesy shout from the upper decks to those below ‘Watch Under!’ A lovely story, although perhaps it’s unlikely that a sea-sick vomiter would have the presence of mind (or even the time) to warn those below. So, if ‘chunder’ is not a contraction of ‘watch under’ where does it come from? It’s almost certainly rhyming slang – ‘chunder’ being short for ‘Chunder Loo’ which rhymes with ‘spew’. Chunder Loo of Akin Foo was a cartoon figure in a long running series of advertisements for Cobra boot polish that appeared in the Bulletin in the early years of the 20th century. (They were drawn by Norman Lindsay between 1909 and 1920.) And in rhyming slang the rhyme word is usually not pronounced. So ‘she’ll be apples’ is rhyming slang for ‘she’ll be apples and spice’ (nice) but the rhyme word is not spoken, only the preceding words. And that rude noise called a ‘raspberry’ is short for ‘raspberry tart’ which rhymes with a bodily function that was a part of Sir Les Patterson’s repertoire. It’s the same with ‘Chunder Loo’ – the rhyme word (Loo) is not spoken, only the preceding word. The whole story is told the Australian National Dictionary (second edition, vol. 1, p. 363.) By the way, it’s considered more polite these days to use Barry Humphries’ other delightful expression for a vomit: a ‘technicolour yawn’.

And now, a small lament for some long-lost Aussie expressions. When I was a small boy, we didn’t call the local smallgoods shop the ‘delicatessen’ – instead we called it the ‘ham and beef shop’. Why, I can’t imagine, since its product range was not limited to those two meats, but that was the name. Does that ring a bell somewhere in your memory? Our mothers would send us to the ‘ham and beef shop’ when we were ‘doing the messages’. Why shopping was ever called ‘the messages’ I have no idea. Was it because we were giving local shopkeepers a ‘message’ in the form of a shopping list of items to be put into the shopping basket? And on those weeks when the household budget was a bit tight we were sent to the butcher to buy ‘tripe’. This (as you will know) is the lining from a cow’s stomach, and was the lowest of the low among offal. My memory is that it had the chewy consistency of rubber, and was so tasteless it was always served with onion and white sauce. Ah, kids today. They don’t know how good they’ve got it.

I have just learned a new word, and I am rapidly starting to wish I hadn’t. Given the chaotic confusion that surrounds gender and sexuality these day, the last thing we needed was another category. But here it is: ‘abrosexual’. It’s the label chosen by people who believe their sexuality is fluid, keeps fluctuating, and is in a constant state of change. I suppose it works a bit like a chook wheel at the pub – you spin the wheel and see where it stops today. Gay? Lesbian? Bi? Oh dear me, it’s settled on ‘straight’ – how boring. The word is recorded by the hyper-hip Urban Dictionary from 2015. It seems to have been coined by someone who didn’t skip all their Latin classes in school, since the prefix ‘abro’ is Latin for ‘open’. Look, I don’t want to be nuisance, and this is a free society so you can have whatever sexual preference you fancy, but I’d quite like it if you left the English language alone for a bit.