Word watch

The Australian National Dictionary Centre is a joint venture between Oxford University Press and ANU. In her inaugural column for ANU Reporter, incoming Director SARAH OGILVIE talks true blue. Australian words have intrigued the rest of the world ever since the first Europeans set foot on our land. This came too late for Australian words to be included in most early English dictionaries, such as Samuel Johnson's famous Dictionary of the English Language (1755). But they have been included ever since, and the large 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains about 3,000 words that originated in Australia, many from Aboriginal languages. Johnson was a good friend of Sir Joseph Banks, who returned to England with news of the Guugu Yimidhirr word kangaroo, which he had collected while the Endeavour was stranded at Cooktown for seven weeks in 1770. Johnson, the gregarious lexicographer, couldn't put the word in his dictionary, but he introduced the word to British high society by impersonating the animal at a dinner party.