After celebrating American English yesterday, it’s back home to Australia today.
A reader of this column—John from Kiama in New South Wales (he makes and restores violins, so he’s a clever man)—asks me for the origin of our little word ‘dill.’
He made it clear that it was the Aussie slang word ‘dill’ he was interested in, not the herbal plant Anethum graveolens (to give it its proper name) that goes so well with fish, chicken, eggs, cucumber, and potato.
John’s interest is in our slang word for ‘a foolish or silly person, an idiot, a simpleton.’
I’m sure this is a word that you’ve come across often.
Have you ever heard someone say, ‘this current government is a bunch of dills’?
Or have you said it yourself?
So, at John’s request I did a bit of digging.
Sometimes when you look into the story of a word you find something delightful.
And this one delights me—it’s a simple story, but it makes so much sense I find it pleasing.
To start with, this is one of ours— ‘dill’ is an Aussie coinage.
It’s first recorded here in 1933, when it appeared in print in a newspaper called the National Advocate, published in Bathurst, New South Wales.
Ah, those were the days—when a national newspaper could come from the bush!
As to the source— ‘dill’ appears to be an abbreviation of the earlier word ‘dilly’ meaning ‘odd, or eccentric, or a bit mad.’
That just pushes our investigation back one notch, so we now ask—what is the origin of ‘dilly’?
This is recorded in Australia from 1910, meaning ‘foolish, or dotty.’
But it may have had an earlier life as a regional expression in Somerset, in England, where it’s recorded from 1873.
As for its origin— ‘dilly’ appears to be a contraction of either ‘dumb’ or ‘daft’ with ‘silly.’
Now, that’s what delights me.
Yes, of course!
It all makes sense now! You take the ‘-illy’ from ‘silly’ and stick on the front the d’ (from either ‘dumb’ or ‘daft’) and you get ‘dilly.’
This, like so many other English regional dialect words then makes its way to Australia, where it flourishes (while it’s forgotten back home in England).
Then in step two, this is shortened to the form we now know ‘dill.’
It’s a simple story, but it explains the word so clearly and so well.
My thanks to John for asking the question.
The latest edition of the podcast 'Words with Kel Richards' is now available (with the dateline 11 September). You can find it by scrolling down this page -- or from wherever you usually get your podcasts.
The September-October issue of Australia Geographic is in newsagents now (with a brilliant picture of a rainbow lorikeet on the cover). Inside (along with a lot of great stories) are my two columns: 'Ozwords' and 'Placenames.'
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