One thing I really like about living in New Zealand is that I suddenly have access to a whole new vocabulary to describe everyday experiences. For the most part culture – science, technology, art, law and pseudo-sciences, such psychology, sociology and anthropology – originates with the upper classes and either filters downward or is imposed on the rest of us. With language the opposite is true – new language is created by the lower classes and filters upward.

New Zealand slang, which is mainly based on working class British slang, is rich and colorful, like ghetto slang in the US. And like their upper middle class counterparts in the US who appropriate ghetto slang, educated New Zealanders readily incorporate it into their own speech.

As I have written before, there is a very strong working class consciousness in New Zealand – which means there are a range of disparaging slang terms for the upper classes

Among the terms I have recently added to my vocabulary (for concepts I previously had no way to express) are

• Airy-fairy – an adjective used to describe concerns (or a person who expresses them) that are based on purely intellectual or theoretical notions that have no basis in reality and are totally impractical.
• Argy-bargy – a useless argument over nothing
• Bollocks – (literally meaning testicles) nonsense
• Bugger – a very useful term, which means to sodomize or someone who engages in sodomy (somehow I don’t see it gaining wide acceptance in the US). Can be used as an expletive like the F word, or combined, as the F word is, to form other useful expressions such as buggered (tired), bugger-all (nothing) and bugger-off.
• Dodgy – not sound, good, or reliable
• Fiddle – verb and adjective meaning to steal, usually from an employer. “Working a fiddle” means getting back at your boss (by stealing paperclips, fudging your timesheet or “throwing a sickie” – see below) for underpaying you.
• Flash – an adjective describing a rich person who exhibits poor taste.
• Flog – to aggressively sell something useless
• Gaffer – boss
• Git – a contemptible, mean-spirited, incompetent, stupid, annoying, or childish person
• Kip – a short sleep
• Legless – extremely drunk
• Moggy – a mongrel cat (Americans have no word for this, do they?)
• Nick – a versatile word that can be used as a verb meaning to steal or be arrested. Or as a noun referring to jail or prison.
• Panel beater – someone who repairs auto bodies (Americans have no expression for this, either)
• Piss-up – an organized session of binge drinking (where you set out to get “pissed” or drunk)
• Ponce – literal meaning is a pimp or effeminate person. “To ponce about” is to put on airs.
• Posh – a pejorative describing rich people who show off
• Sickie – as in “throwing a sickie” (taking a day off when you’re not really sick)
• Twit – as found in Monty Python’s Upper Class Twit Contest. Easiest to explain with a photo:

• Wop-wops – rural areas or hinterlands (people in Auckland view New Plymouth as the wop-wops)

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