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Comment by mpalmes | Hacker News Reader

As someone from rural QLD, Australia, I feel like we might be losing some of these unique sayings in our vernacular over time. Though we are definitely still hanging onto our diminutives, especially those ending with o, ie and y (E.g. ambo, rego, arvo, servo, barbie, footy).

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Have you ever noticed that in Aussie people tend to end stuff with 'o' more often? Nobody else in the world calls documentation 'doco' do they? It's not a hard and fast rule, granted. Pokies, blueys, I guess. For the imagery, I always loved 'flat out like a lizard...' or one of Dame Edna's: 'I feel like a shag on a rock' which always makes the poms smile.

Definitely, we sure do love shortening words, while using an 'o' at the end. It was a bit of an adjustment moving to North America and using the full word, even in casual conversations. Small things like saying "gas/service station" instead of "servo" or "vehicle registration" instead of "rego". Us Aussie's must come across quite unprofessional at times with our slang and sayings like 'flat out like a lizard'.

No-one says doco for 'documentation', but they do all the time for 'documentary': "I saw a doco on sharks last night..."

We're definitely losing a lot of our colloquial terms, but not so much the way we speak. It's the nature of language after all, to change over time. I miss some of the terms, and a while back I intentionally started to use 'crikey' again (though that word itself is not hugely missed). Friends of mine, born and bred here, think it's hilariously quaint.

I've used doco for documentation though as you say it is almost exclusively means documentary.

for me docs = documentation and doco = documentary

Strewth. You'd sound like a flamin' galah.

No-one says doco for documentation? You'd better have a word with everybody in Little Collins Street then mate. (Used to drive me mad bloody victorians).

I saw an old taxi driver use the colloquialism "as blind as a welder's dog" on Enough Rope and that's been my favorite ever since.

two that I heard this year from BT doing footy commentary that I loved: "hard as a cat's head" and "he was all over him like a cheap suit". What a dead set legend!

That was a great episode. The one I remember from the taxi driver was "went through him like lightning through a wet dog"

My favorite was always "don't come the raw prawn with me", aside from being in trouble I never worked out what it meant.

I'm pretty sure that the full expression is 'flat out like a lizard drinking'. Which is presumably because they can't kneel elegantly at the watering hole, and just splay their limbs.

Yeah it is that. Some monitors carry their heads up most of the time but lie flat to drink.

Sparky, chippy, tradie, firey, etc.

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