“More tucker than you could poke a stick at”: The bicultural journey of an enduring Australianism

Tucker is a highly functional and productive “Australianism”–the term used in the first edition of The Australian National Dictionary (The Australian National Dictionary: a dictionary of Australianisms on historical principles. 1988. Oxford University Press) to refer to “one of those words and meanings of words which have originated in Australia, which have greater currency here than elsewhere, or which have special significance in Australia because of their connection with an aspect of the history or of the country” (p. vi). As a variant for “food”, tucker has both a very long history and a firm foothold in present-day usage. This study charts the progress of tucker from its apparent origins in Melaleuka Pidgin to current times, noting its separate semantic movement in mainstream Australian English (AusE) and Australian Aboriginal English (AE). Its occurrence in various corpora is surveyed, leading to consideration of its continuing versatility and possible positioning in the landscape of Australian “slanguage”, particularly with respect to emerging theories of the longevity of slang. A robust survivor, tucker’s staying power is arguably tied to its grounding at the first point of contact between Indigenous and settler colonial Australia.