Phraseology and Culture in English

5. Rhetorical aspects of Australian idioms 
Australian similes and idiomatic phrases often give evidence of linguistic 
crafting. Some seem to owe their origins to alliteration, e.g. bald as a ban-
dicoot; bushman’s breakfast; mad as a meat-axe; gone to Gowings. In ex-
amples like these, the sound effects make up for oddities or ambiguity in 
their lexico-semantic content, and help to underscore their syntactic pattern-
ing, the formal structure that identifies their pragmatic purpose. 
Many Australian similes work through a play on words, so that the in-
tended sense of the key word is not the one elaborated on. Examples in-
volving done (like a dinner) and full (as a boot) show how the simile de-
flects attention from the colloquial sense being used, in much the same way 
as rhyming slang is used to mask its own referent. Other more extended 
examples in which the colloquial sense of the word provides the key to 
meaning are cold as a polar bear’s backside; flat out like a lizard drinking;
more hide than Jessie, and shoot through like a Bondi tram. The ordinary 
polysemy of words in standard usage has also emerged in various examples 
discussed. In cases such as miserable as a bandicoot and mad as a cut snake
it seems to have affected their meaning over the course of time. For others, 

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it provides a stimulating tension between two divergent senses of the word, 
as with charge like a wounded bull*, also a herd of wounded buffalo / a
stuck bear (Wilkes 1995), as a comment on high prices.
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The alternative 
version charge like the light brigade provides another kind of distractor, 
which is also played on in charge like the heavy brigade (The Australian,
November 1978). The evaluative phrase knows more than her prayers* (used 
of an experienced woman) is deft in its double-entendre, as is in like Flynn*
(for a womanizer). Their epigrammatic quality has no doubt contributed to 
their survival. 
Alongside the tersely worded simile just quoted, we have seen many 
more elaborately worded examples, sometimes fanciful or farcical in their 
content. Comic hyperbole is evident in examples such as scarce as hen’s
teeth* and rare as rocking horse manure*, and in formal idioms like those 
constructed with couldn’t and if it was raining…, discussed in Section 4. 
The individual scenarios constructed in each variant of those idioms might 
be likened to rhetorical tropes, used to express an absolute reference point. 
The trope itself creates a kind of bathos, most obviously in the if it was
raining… set, which bring the flight of fancy firmly down to earth. 
A pervasive aspect of Australian idiom is its exploitation of negative po-
larity. The negative is explicit in the set of idioms relating to unemploy-
ment: No work at Bourke etc., and its use is straightforward in wouldn’t
touch it with a forty foot pole. The negative value is sometimes implicit, as 
in as useful as a pocket in a singlet, which teases the imagination with the 
positive potential of the simile before allowing the inherently negative judge-
ment to take over. Alternative versions of the simile tend to go straight for 
the negative, with useless as… In the same way, happy as a bastard on
Father’s Day tends to be paraphrased with unhappy / unlucky / miserable
as a bastard…, thereby losing some of the allusiveness of the original. The 
most remarkable set of negative constructions are those with couldn’t…
(p. 238), where the simple task described makes it a kind of litotes, and sub-
lime understatement is created through the negative formulation of an idea. 
All these examples show a spontaneous rhetoric, and we note the use of 
rhetorical techniques which might otherwise be identified with literary tradi-
tion. The similes and idioms discussed are not unlike the oral formulae of 
ancient heroic poetry, in their rhythmic and structural properties, though 
they are less fixed – in fact highly adaptable to the prosaic discourse in which 
they are deployed. Many of the idioms discussed have oral roots, and were 
no doubt well used in nineteenth century Australia before being recorded by 
social commentators, such as those from the 1840s and 1850s noted in con-

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Pam Peters 
nection with bandicoot (Section 3, above). Later nineteenth century novel-
ists and short story writers who implanted them in their writing (e.g. Bol-
drewood, Lawson), were no doubt capturing idioms heard in common par-
lance. More recent examples come from journalists associated with Austra-
lia’s major newspapers (as indicated in many of the references). Journalists 
in their daily writing invoke the common idiom and embellish it. Though 
their articles are less permanent than the writing enshrined in published 
monographs, their writing is lively evidence of the verbal rhetoric in collo-
quial and everyday Australian discourse – especially the pleasure in word 
play, and the use of both understatement and overstatement. 
The play by writers on conversational idiom also involves conscious 
shifts of style or register. On rare occasions the language shifts up a gear, 
as when lower than a snake’s belly is rephrased as lower than a snake’s
duodenum (The Australian, March 1979). Most often the language shifts 
downwards, as in the pathetic contrast between palaces and the (handle of)
the dunny (door), in if it was rainin’ palaces (Section 4). The incongruity 
of stylistically low language in what purports to be a serious curse is part 
of the fun in May all your chooks turn into emus and kick your dunny
down. But the sense of stylistic incongruence is there wherever colloquial 
terms are used within the formal structure of simile, as in full as a goog;
lousy as a bandicoot; more front than Myers. Informal language serves to 
anchor the simile and affirm its common relevance, with or without icono-
clastic humor. The affirmative use of informal elements of style by Aus-
tralian writers of both fiction and nonfiction is noted by Delbridge (2001: 
313–314), for its rhetorical effect as well as an expression of national 
identity. 
Whatever their stylistic and semantic contents, the idioms reviewed in 
this article have a clear rhetorical and pragmatic purpose: to underscore a 
point of reference. In similes it is the key word; in evaluative idioms, it is 
the concept paraphrased; but either way the idiom serves to intensify the 
reference. It seems indeed that the illocutionary force can be delivered 
whether their terms are very precise or rather blurred in their denotation (as 
in gone to Gowings). The shifting meanings we have noted in connection 
with various Australian idioms suggests that they would not be understood 
in exactly the same way by every member of the community at a given 
point in time. Yet their survival from the nineteenth through to the twenti-
eth century, and from decade to decade, shows that they still serve their 
essential pragmatic purpose, of drawing attention to a word or concept by 
embellishment. 

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