Recently Bernard Salt (writing in The Weekend Australian) drew my attention to that fine old Aussie word ‘bung.’
Bernard said that from the 1960s the word ‘bung’ meant ‘to throw or place or put something on, as in to bung a sausage (on the barbie) or a coat (if it’s cold).
Or, indeed, to bung something on the table if it’s to be discussed, admired, and/or eaten.
To bung on an accent or affectation was done by someone to present as being a bit la-de-da.’
The final authority on everything to do with the Australian language is The Australian National Dictionary so I decided to hunt through its pages for a clue to ‘bung.’
And the result is interesting.
That big book records another familiar meaning of ‘bung’—namely ‘broken’, as in ‘the TV’s gone bung.’
This is definitely an Australian coinage which seems to start in Australian pidgin English around 1841.
To start with ‘bung’ just meant dead, but over time it acquired a wider range of meanings— ‘to go bung’ could mean bankruptcy, financial ruin (from 1897) or to be incapacitated or broken (from 1945)—but the Aussie word ‘bung’ never had the meaning of ‘to throw or put.’
That seems to come, not from us but from Scotland!
The verb ‘to bung’ meaning ‘to throw, to send, to put’ is recorded as coming into mainstream English from a Scottish dialect source in 1825.
So, there you are Bernard—a little revision on your excellent column: one ‘bung’ is an Australian coinage (the going ‘bung’ one) and the other ‘bung’ (the throw something on ‘bung’) is not.
But if you hadn’t raised this, we would never have discovered it—so, well done!
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