Speaking on his show on Sky New Andrew Bolt said that what Australia needs are more leaders who love this country.
I agreed with him, and I coined a new word to say exactly that.
The word is ‘Australophile’. The first part of the word clearly comes from our national name ‘Australia’, while the suffix (‘-phile’) comes from the Greek word for love (or one of four Greek words for love) ‘philos.’
The ancient Greeks had (as I mentioned) four words for love: eros, philos, storge, and agape. ‘Eros’ was their word for romantic love (no, not for sex—for romantic love, think of hearts and flowers, Mills and Boon novelettes, love songs and so on); philos, (the one we are using here, was their word for the love of friends and friendship); storge (pronounced ‘stor-gee’ or ‘stor-gay’ with a hard G sound) was family love (the love that binds mother and child, that binds siblings together and so on); while the last ‘agape’ was the gracious love of generosity (loving the unlovely or the very difficult to love, pronounced ‘agg-apay’ with a hard G sound).
Out of those ‘philos’ is the one that the English language has chosen to ‘form nouns and adjectives with the sense of loving the person or thing denoted by the first element’ (Oxford English Dictionary).
When Aussies get together for a barbecue today, or go to the beach, and have Australian flags on their T-shirts or beach towels it is because they are ‘Australophiles.’
These are people who love this place—love the landscape, the bush, the sweeping horizons, the startling beauty, the gum trees, the call of the kookaburra, our strange (and sometimes deadly!) wildlife, and the friendly, sunburnt people who live here.
These are people who love our national story—the arrival of civilisation in the form of a bunch of convicts and their gaolers but gave rise to a great democracy.
When Andrew Bolt says we need more leaders who share our love he makes a lot of sense.
It is hard to believe that Anthony Albanese, with his grim, unhappy face, really loves this place the way we do.
But we do!
So happy Australia Day fellow Australophile!
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BY THE WAY...
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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