What's Their Story? A History of Australian Words

摘要

Widely considered to be Australia's foremost lexicographer, Bruce Moore is the editor of the Australian Oxford Dictionary and is also the Director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre. His interest in the origin of some of Australia's best known words is explained in this paperback which is both an informative and an amusing read. He successfully puts to rest some of the theories about certain Australian terms -POM being one of the most familiar - and we discover that POM (or POME as it was originally) does not stand for Prisoner of Mother England nor yet for Prisoner of his/her Majesty. He thinks it far more likely that it refers to the word pomegranate which rhymes with immigrant (rhyming slang from England) and could be abbreviated to Pom or Pommie. Thus the phrase "whinging Pom" came into being and referred to immigrants coming out from the UK (ten pound Poms) who complained about conditions in their new country.