Kia ora koutou, when I ask that question I’m thinking about the expressions, slang, catchwords I heard when I was young. When I said to someone recently, ‘Could you chip the weeds off the drive, please?’ and they looked at me like, ‘Huh?’ I realised that one of the most well used and familiar phrases to do with gardening, had now gone, replaced by whatever succeeding generations needed to make their meanings clear. I don’t rage abut this, its inevitable, I just think its a pity to lose some of them.
‘Chipping’ the weeds is when you go along the driveway and simply slide the spade under the top growth so you’re merely removing the evidence, not the crime, the top green stuff not the roots. The result is that the drive looks good, nice and weed free, the sort of thing you want when visitors you don’t know well are coming. Eventually of course, you have to do ‘the whole nine yards‘ which means doing the job properly.
‘I’ve taken a scunner.’ I still say this. It means I’ve taken a strong dislike to someone, it means its personal, that I’m making it clear they’ve offended me. For example, I’ve taken a scunner against online sellers because they take so long to deliver. They all promise quick delivery, they all send emails that say ‘your order has been dispatched’ and although the money goes from my bank account immediately I close the deal, my order still doesn’t bloody turn up for another two or three, sometimes more, weeks. They want the money upfront but they don’t give the service upfront. The delay is not because of the courier, its because these online firms take orders whether they have the item in stock or not. eg I bought a new vacuum cleaner from Briscoes on April 11 – it arrived over three weeks later. I bought an iPad stand – it took over a month. That’s why I’ve taken a scunner against online shopping. I ordered a new electric kettle from Innovations over two weeks (or was it three?) ago and I’m still using a pot to heat water for tea and coffee.
‘She looked at them sideways‘ doesn’t mean she’s got eyesight problems, it means she’s expressing reluctance to believe what they’re saying. That she has strong doubts about the veracity of what she’s hearing or reading so she doesn’t trust then.
‘He’d sell his mother for sixpence‘ is self explanatory – someone whose only loyalty is to himself and his bank account. Money and possessions are his God. It also says what the speaker thinks of that sort of person and that the speaker is not like that mercenary character.
‘Havey–cavey‘ – as in ‘There’s something havey–cavey about this’ eg there’s something extremely suspicious about this. For example – someone offers you the latest 16 inch Macbook Pro for $120.
‘Taking a dekko‘ means either you’re having a look around a particular place, or that you’re going to read or look at something and make up your mind about it later.
‘Long drop‘ – a deeply dug hole in the ground – usually with a piece of wood with a hole in it set over the hole. Longdrops were usually situated at least a mile away from the house and were lined with spiderwebs plus the spiders and stunk like you might expect from a toilet with no water flushing ability.
And if you said, ‘S/he’s keen on her/him/them/it,’ it means that the one being spoken about is fathoms deep in thrall (either sexual, religious or both) with the other one/thing mentioned. A classic understatement which everyone who heard it understood. If it was really extreme you might say ‘mad keen’. So if you felt the opposite, you said, ‘I’m not keen on that.’
These are just a few I remember and they’re only from my experience and yes I know there’s a dictionary of NZ slang but I actually like hearing them as part of a conversation.
Never mind. I think ‘cool’ and all the others are tau heke – awesome – the new ones add their own vigour and life to the language but just occasionally I like to hear…
‘What’d he say?’
‘Sweet nothing mate, sweet bloody nothing.’
Which means he said a lot but didn’t say anything useful or to the point. A few of those around.
Renée
