Aussie
Part of speech: adj
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From a clipping of Australian (or Australia) + -ie.
The spelling likely adopted the visual template of the pre‐existing personal diminutive Aussie (from Austin or Augusta). However, while the personal nickname retains standard English phonics with a voiceless /s/, the pronunciation of the national slang (IPA⁽ᵏᵉʸ⁾: /ˈɒzi/) was driven by a highly productive morphophonological template in Commonwealth slang that strongly favors short stressed vowels and lenited consonants.
The clipped base promotes the historically unstressed initial vowel to the short IPA⁽ᵏᵉʸ⁾: /ɒ/. This reflects a broader Commonwealth phonological rule where the /ɔː/ typically associated with the ⟨au⟩ digraph is shortened before a tautosyllabic /s/ or /s/‐cluster (as in austral). To lock in this short vowel on the page and prevent readers from reverting to an open‐syllable pronunciation, writers doubled the s as a structural dummy consonant.
This created an orthographic trap. The spelling effectively represents a conservative /ˈɔːsi/, preserving the standard phonetic values of both the long vowel and the voiceless fricative. However, the egalitarian colloquial register actively demanded the lenited (voiced) /z/ (compare Tassie, Brissie, possie, cossie). Thus, the dialect compromised by writing the conservative, etymological ⟨ss⟩, while speaking the colloquial /z/.
Though popularized internationally as military slang from 1915 onwards, early printed evidence shows the clipping was already active in Australian sporting vernacular by at least 1913.
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1913 January 29, The Referee, Sydney, page 14:
“Aussie,” as the “heads” prefer to call Australian, won by 1min 14sec from the second boat, Lilian.
Inflected forms:
form: more Aussie
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most Aussie
pos: adj
tags: superlative
Senses:
gloss: Australian.
pos: adj
tags: Australia
New-Zealand
South-Africa
UK
colloquial
not-comparable
usually
examples: From the Marvel Mixmaster to the Miracle Microwave, every time a new-fangled gadget has lobbed into the Aussie kitchen, Aussie mums have changed their cooking styles accordingly.
Most Aussie officers seemed this way to me; always cool, deliberate, and extremely rational in their decision making, a far cry from the American leadership I had seen during my first year in the army.
Here’s something I learned the hard way: The very best time of year to start off with accounting software is the beginning of the financial year (1 July for most Aussie businesses, and 1 April for most Kiwi businesses).
For example, if you buy US dollars (USD) using Australian dollars (AUD) and the Aussie dollar falls, you can then sell your US dollars and you will have made money as you will have more Aussie dollars than you started with.
They’re the “Almost Aussies” who embrace their new culture with a vengeance – some becoming more Aussie than Aussies.
You couldn’t get more Aussie than the cast he chose—or their cars. The goodies drive Holdens and the baddies cruise around in a big, grunting, chocolate-brown Monaro.
“I’m a perfectionist, mate,” he said, his accent becoming noticeably more Aussie, as it always did in private.
“Every fucking aussie. Go to Cronulla Beach Sunday for some Leb and wog bashing Aussie Pride ok.”
Translations: