Phraseology and Culture in English

partment store. The relexification of this originally Melbourne formula 
(Wilkes 1995) in Sydney is again a sign of the lively connections between 
phraseology and Australian oral culture – and of the endemic rivalry be-
tween Sydney and Melbourne! The names of the dominant local retailers 
are enshrined also in the similes more front than Myers and more front than
Foy and Gibsons, where the play on “front” makes it a comment on some-
one’s impudence or bravado. This is also the point of the Sydney-siders’ 
simile more hide than Jessie, an allusion to a much-loved, long-lived ele-
phant at the Sydney zoo, which puns on the word hide with its Australian 
colloquial meaning ‘impudence’. 
Yet another metropolitan idiom, gone to Gowings* (referring to a men’s 
department store in Sydney) is remarkable for its polysemy – or indetermi-
nacy of meaning. The phrase seems to have originated in a series of 1940s 
advertisements for Gowings, showing scenes vacated in a hurry by those 
seeking bargains (Wilkes 1995). One of these scenarios (a church) focused 
on the explanatory note “Gone to Gowings” fastened to the altar by the 
bridegroom who had cut short the wait for his bride. This would account 
for it becoming a general excuse for someone’s absence, doing something 

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Pam Peters 
else which cannot or should not be specified. Yet with the elusiveness of its 
denotation, it has acquired various other applications. In the Macquarie
Dictionary (1997) it is associated with “going under” in three different ways: 
financial deterioration, the failure of a horse or sports team to win, and 
illness, especially a hangover (from overconsumption of alcohol). Baker 
(1978: 231) reported it as one of the many idioms for drunkenness. Mean-
while in citations obtained from a Google search of Australian internet docu-
ments in 2004, gone to Gowings is commonly used to refer to dementia. 
Both drunkenness and dementia are the focus of other Australian euphemis-
tic paraphrases (see below, Section 4), and the pragmatic implications of 
gone to Gowings, used to cover unexplained absence and / or a dubious 
condition, have given it a life of its own. Gowings itself continues to trade 
successfully in everyday clothing, decades after the advertising campaign 
that made its name a household phrase. 
Australian notorieties take their place in idiom, in bet like the Watsons –
whose name became the touchstone for gambling, as they moved from Ben-
digo (VIC) to become shearers in outback NSW and Sydney hoteliers be-
tween 1880 and 1910 (Baker 1978: 273). As game as Ned Kelly features the 
well-remembered nineteenth century bushranger (1855–1880), much painted 
in his tin armor-plate by artist Sidney Nolan, and now heroized by author 
Peter Carey, in the prize-winning novel The Kelly gang (2000). Another 
ambiguous hero is remembered in in like Flynn, a simile for opportunism, 
especially of a sexual kind, alluding to the much-publicized escapades of 
Errol Flynn, Australian film star (1909–1959). Former Australian institu-
tions enjoy an after-life in simile, like the Sydney tram network invoked in 
shoot through like a Bondi tram, though it and all other suburban routes 
were scrapped in the 1960s. The coinage (pounds, shillings, pence) used in 
Australia until decimal currency was introduced in 1966, is there in silly as
a two-bob watch / tuppenny watch, and the pragmatic point of their being 
cheap and nasty still comes through.
Australian idioms like these are demonstrably connected with historical 
persons and institutions, with the built and the natural environment, with 
the earlier phase of settlement as well as twentieth century metropolitan 
life. They provide evidence of continuous lexical creativity in relation to 
the contemporary environment, finding socio-cultural benchmarks in eve-
ryday contexts. Some of this phraseology also taps deeper issues in Austra-
lian society and culture, expressing common values in consciously varied 
terms. Let us therefore discuss some of the recurrent themes, and their 
broader significance. 

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