To smother all our lingo up with slang
And words that are of birth too very recent
Should be outlawed like a gunman or a gang
He would rather term a lounge lizard, a drifter
And say "Bless my soul!" in place of "Strike me pink !"
And what we call a "spot" or else a "snifter"
He would dignify by simply terming "drink!"
Well if he'd really have us talk that way,
Our answer in plain English is -- O.K.! He wouldn't call a fellow man a blokey
And no doubt he'd turn a sickly shade of pale
If he heard referred to once as "stir" or "chokey"
The place he knows as prison or as gaol
A "dame" or "tab" or "brush" or "skirt" or "sheelah,"
Would seem to him a kind of double-Dutch
And the "flat-foot" that's replaced the ancient peeler
Would doubtless fog professors just as much
But if our slang is rotten he should think
We'll have a dash to edge it "FAIR-THE-DINK!" No more we'll seek expressions that are alien
We'll stick unto the local lingo true
And foreign stuff we'll ban for good Australian
In other words we'll put it "in the blue"
No more on Oxford consonants we'll slobber
We'll watch our vowels in a style to please
Our mate won't be our "buddy" but our "cobber"
Our wife won't be the missus, but "the cheese"
All slang is bad, we've tùmbled to it now,
Between ourselves, professor-- IT'S A COW!
. . . The Hobo
Notes From the Western Australian Newspaper The Sunday Times 11 Feb 1940 p. 24.