Food lovers are being called upon by The Australian National University (ANU) to contribute their favourite food-related words and phrases to The Australian National Dictionary.
Director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre (ANDC) at ANU, and Chief Editor of the Dictionary, Amanda Laugesen said that as culinary culture changed in Australia, so too did the language people used to describe food and the dining experience.
“There are a much wider range of food choices available now – multicultural dishes, street food, ingredients from native plants and animals,” Dr Laugesen said.
“We also like our less formal ways of enjoying food, from sausage sizzles to food festivals,” she said.
“All of these changes are reflected in the language we use, and we expect that there are many new Australian food-related terms that we have not recorded.”
Dr Laugesen said the ANDC was also welcoming contributions that may not be new but that people thought should be recorded.
She said the Centre had collected some older words that should have gone into the dictionary before such as honey joy, tank loaf, bushman brownie and smiley fritz to name a few.
The Director said the ANDC ran an appeal each year for contributions from the public for The Australian National Dictionary to build on the publication’s collection of Australian words and their origins.
“Contributions from the public are a very important way of alerting us to new words, or words that may’ve been overlooked in the past,” Dr Laugesen said.
“We look forward to seeing what we discover with this latest appeal,” she said.
“It might even finally settle the age-old debate over whether we should call it a potato cake or a scallop.”
People can send in their favourite food-related words and phrases at this PS News link.
