A UK exchange student based in Queensland has highlighted some of the Aussie words she’d never encountered before moving Down Under.

Laura Collins, a 24-year-old from Cambridge, recently shared a TikTok slide post elaborating on her favourite newly discovered Aussie terminology.

The British woman, who is currently studying a PhD in linguistics, was confused when she heard ‘Manchester’ used as a term for furnishings like bed linen and bath towels. 

Laura said the only Manchester she knew of was ‘the northern English town and its associated famous football club’.

But helpful commenters jumped in with explanations for why this name is used in Australia.

‘It’s called Manchester because all the cotton and linen used to come from Manchester UK, as that’s where the factories were,’ one reply offered.

‘The linen/cotton sheets would arrive in ships from Manchester and the storage containers for those items were therefore labelled “Manchester” – and the name tradition continued,’ another added.

The next word that had Laura stumped was: ‘whippersnipper’. 

She said her friends were discussing the gardening tool, which she knows to be called a ‘strimmer’ or line trimmer.

‘[My friends] were really surprised I didn’t know what they meant,’ she said, adding that they explained to her that it accurately describes how the tool ‘whips and snips’ grass.

Confessing that it was her ‘favourite’ new Aussie word, Laura added: ‘I will be calling it a whippersnipper from now on.’

A few alcohol-themed terms also caught the expat’s attention, including ‘Bottle-O’, ‘schooner’ and ‘goon’.

Not only was Laura stumped by ‘Bottle-O’ as a store name, but further explained that in the UK alcohol is sold at the supermarket – not in a separate specialty shop.

‘I don’t want to talk about how long my dad and I spent looking for wine in Woolworths before we realised there wasn’t any,’ she wrote.

The word ‘goon’ also caught Laura’s attention for the fact that in recent years it has been adopted worldwide as Gen Z slang, referring to someone who compulsively pleasures themselves.

On the contrary, in Australia it has a storied history as a slang name for cheap boxed wine, with the ‘goon bag’ being what the wine is contained in. 

‘I imagine telling someone, “I’m bringing a bag of goon” would get some funny reactions elsewhere in the world,’ An Aussie commenter who understood both the old and new definitions replied:

Another Aussie word Laura took great delight in was the name for water fountains being ‘bubblers’, which she felt was a ‘much cuter name for it’.

Many commenters on the post understood this term to have originated in Australian schoolyards – but noted that it remains widely used amongst all generations of Aussies.

The linguistics student was also taken by the Aussie catch-all term of ‘lollies’ to describe a variety of sweets.

‘One of my new friends asked me if I wanted a lolly. I was expecting a lollipop but instead I got a gummy sweet,’ Laura said.

‘Lollies mean everything from lollipops, gummies, sour lollies, hard lollies, skittles are lollies and even mints,’ a reply from an Aussie confirmed.

‘A lolly is any sweet or candy, except chocolate,’ another person agreed.

The final word Laura had encountered was the most contentious.

While travelling around parts of Queensland she’d heard the exclamation, ‘bonza!’.

‘Things can be bonza, people can be bonza,’ she explained in her post. ‘It means great or impressive, and it’s also a very fun word.’

But on this point, a number of young Aussies argued that the word was outdated and rarely used.

‘Bonza is a retro one! Hardly hear it anymore these days,’ replied one local.

‘Bonza… never heard anyone use that unless they’re over 60, and even that is rare.’

The popular post attracted thousands of likes and almost 500 replies.

Amongst the responses was one from a fellow British expat who felt Laura had perfectly captured the essence of the uniquely Aussie words.

‘Hahaha yep these words are all used,’ they confirmed. 

‘As a Brit who has been here 20 years, they are now part of my vocabulary.’

Laura told Daily Mail that as a writer and linguistics student, she has always been passionate about words and was fascinated to discover Australia’s unique terminology.

‘I knew there were bound to be language differences, even coming from a country that also speaks English, because every place has its own distinct cultural and linguistic identity,’ Laura explained.

‘I was surprised by how many new words I learnt, though, and some of them led to some very funny misunderstandings’ she added.

Laura also found it intriguing that some of the words she discussed in her post didn’t necessarily apply Australia-wide.

‘Engaging with commenters taught me that some [words] are region-specific and even fellow Australians didn’t always know of or use them,’ she said. ‘That just goes to show even within a country there is so much variation and that’s one of the things I find so fascinating about language.’