Each week Dictionary.com publishes a list of words making the news that week.
It’s American, so it only includes words that are in the news in the United States.
Hence, I was surprised to see in their latest list the word ‘dingo.’
A young Canadian woman, 19-year-old Piper James, was mauled by dingos on Fraser Island / K’gari.
She had gone to the beach near the Maheno Wreck about 5am after leaving her campsite.
Just 90 minutes later, her lifeless body was found surrounded by dingoes.
I assumed that it must be this tragedy that put ‘dingo’ into American news bulletins.
And it did.
But there were other stories as well.
For instance, Dictionary.com reported that since Russia’s 2022 invasion, dogs in Ukraine have come to more closely resemble their wild relatives.
Researchers found that dogs on the front line had begun to look more like coyotes or dingoes.
Most of these dogs had longer muzzles, similar to wild canines; smaller body mass; and upright, pointed ears rather than floppy ones.
Apparently, dogs resembling dingoes are better suited to survival in a war zone than those with more ‘domesticated’ features.
According to the Australian National Dictionary the word ‘dingo’ comes from what they call the ‘Sydney language’—but I’m not sure what they mean by this. Gadigal? Eora?
At any rate the word is recorded from 1788—from the very first year of the convict colony.
The Australian National Dictionary defines ‘dingo’ as meaning ‘wild dog’ and gives its Latin name as Canis lupus dingo.
Now ‘lupus’ is the Latin word for ‘wolf’ so when it was named it was, I guess, seen as being very wild!
And, of course, the dingo gave rise to the longest structure in Australia (I am told it is, in fact, the longest structure in the word)—the dingo fence (also known as the dog fence).
It runs 5,614 kilometres from near Dalby on the Darling Downs in Queensland through thousands of kilometres of arid land ending west of Eyre peninsular on cliffs of the Nullarbor Plain above the Great Australian Bight near Nundroo in South Australia.
And now the dingo has extended its fame by turning up on American news bulletins.
Well done dingoes!
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If you'd like to see my A-Z list of Aussie slang, you'll find it here in the Australian Geographic website -- A-Z list of Aussie slang. Here’s the link: The A-Z of Aussie slang - Australian Geographic
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