Aussie Life

Aussie life

2 December 2023 9:00 am

Who can honestly say they’ve never contemplated murder? What red-blooded Australian can put their hand on their heart and swear…

Language

2 December 2023 9:00 am

We are unlikely to forget the look on Anthony Blinken’s face when the word ‘dictator’ slipped out of Joe Biden’s…

Language

25 November 2023 9:00 am

My Australian Word of the Year for 2023 is ‘No’. I made the announcement this week on Peta Credlin’s show…

Aussie life

18 November 2023 9:00 am

I’ve never been a fan of Gordon Ramsay. More prudie than foodie, perhaps, I’ve always believed that what comes out…

Language

18 November 2023 9:00 am

At first glance ‘deafening silence’ looks like an oxymoron – a noun linked to a contradictory adjective. We know all…

Language

11 November 2023 9:00 am

I suggest the right word for Hamas is ‘barbarians’. It was the Greeks who coined this word when savage, uncivilised…

Aussie life

4 November 2023 9:00 am

Now that the referendum is behind us, we must start doing something about Australia’s burgeoning ICE problem. You wouldn’t know…

Language

4 November 2023 9:00 am

They say that in war truth is the first casualty – and the language of truth is certainly being butchered…

Language

28 October 2023 9:00 am

The weather bureau tells us that we are now officially in an ‘El Niño event’ and, as a result we…

Aussie life

21 October 2023 9:00 am

Timing matters just as much in tragedy as it does in comedy. And it is important to remember that the…

Language

21 October 2023 9:00 am

The word ‘special’ means: ‘Exceptional in quality or degree; unusual; out of the ordinary; excelling in some way’ (Oxford English…

Aussie life

14 October 2023 9:00 am

The plight of indigenous people is a scab on our nation which worsens with the picking. No one, not even…

Language

14 October 2023 9:00 am

Noel Pearson and others have insisted the Voice referendum ‘is not about race’. Does that make sense linguistically? The word…

Aussie life

7 October 2023 9:00 am

The death of actor David McCallum last week prompted me to google the theme music for The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,…

Language

7 October 2023 9:00 am

A reader has asked me about the common expression ‘virtue-signalling’. The meaning, I think, is fairly clear. It is a…

Aussie life

30 September 2023 9:00 am

The word humble comes from the Latin humilis, or humus, meaning literally, soil or ground, a priest recently revealed in…

Language

30 September 2023 9:00 am

Every so often I like to share with you new words being added to dictionaries. Dictionary.com has just added 566…

Aussie life

23 September 2023 9:00 am

There was a time when Australians prided themselves on their nose for bulls–t and for their willingness to call it…

Language

23 September 2023 9:00 am

One of the powers of language is that it can give us the words (the tools) to think about our…

Aussie life

16 September 2023 9:00 am

Seven Days in May, a novel written in 1962 and turned into a film in 1964, concerns a planned coup…

Language

16 September 2023 9:00 am

I need to loudly lament (once again) the deceptive misuse of the word ‘mistake’ by people who have a black…

Aussie life

9 September 2023 9:00 am

Presumably, you don’t get to become head of football’s governing body in a football-mad country like Spain without putting in…

Language

9 September 2023 9:00 am

Here’s a brand new Australian political expression I’ve just coined: ‘cane toad politics’. I expect it to take its place…

Aussie life

2 September 2023 9:00 am

Six years ago the ABC posted an article online about William Crowther, a prominent 19th-century Tasmanian politician, a statue of…

Language

2 September 2023 9:00 am

A national survey has found 64 per cent of Jewish students say they’ve experienced anti-Semitism at university. At Sydney University…