Older generations of Australians generally didn't approve of waste, showoffs and vulgar flamboyance.
Virtues such as temperance, modesty, perseverance and constraint were
necessary due to factors such as economic
depression, wars, hardship and lack of birth control.
During the convict era, young men associated with jauntily wearing fashionable hats made from the cabbage tree palm (Livistona australis) were labelled Cabbage Tree Mobs.
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| Colonial Observer (Sydney, NSW : 1841 - 1844), Saturday 29 October 1842 |
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| Australian writer Marcus Clarke wearing a cabbage tree hat, 1866 |
In Melbourne, the word
larrikin became popular after police sergeant John Staunton described youths to the magistrate in his Galway brogue,
larking about in the
street ('larrr a kin').
Ned Kelly, in his 1879 Jerilderie letter, wrote: "It takes eight or eleven of the biggest mud crushers in
Melbourne to take one poor little half-starved larrakin [sic] to a watch house".
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| LARRIKINS. Mr. Longmore.—" QUITE A TREAT—AIN'T IT, YALE?—TO SEE Mr. Vale.—"YES, INDEED; IT MAKES ONE ALMOST WISH TO BOYS ENJOYING THEMSELVES IN THAT HARMLESS MANNER?"BE YOUNG AGAIN." Melbourne Punch (Vic. : 1855 - 1900), Thursday 18 May 1871 |
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| Clarence and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser (Grafton, NSW : 1859 - 1889), Saturday 23 November 1878 |
The British-English term "lout" was first recorded in 1596 in the writing of James Dalrymple.
Mug lair also seems to be derived from the British slang word
lairy (or leery), meaning "knowingly conceited" for a flashily, showy, rude and socially inappropriate
young person (usually male).
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| Balonne Beacon (St. George, Qld. : 1909 - 1954), Thursday 18 March 1948 |
In the 1950s, there was a new group of louts. Males were called bodgies, and the females were called widgies. Dressing in a similar way to the British Rocker, an article in the Perth
Sunday Times of 1952 claimed that "......bodgies originated in America, but it's only in Australia where they're called bodgies. The word is a term that originated in Sydney, to describe anything "lairy".
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| Daily Advertiser (Wagga Wagga, NSW : 1911 - 1954), Monday 10 December 1951 |
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| Truth (Sydney, NSW : 1894 - 1954), Sunday 18 May 1952, |
A hoon, is generally a term of derision for a young bloke who drives too fast. The word originated from rhyming slang, "silver spoon", for someone who lived off immoral earnings.
Crude, loud, or stupid, the word
yahoo was
coined by Jonathan Swift in "Gulliver's Travels", for an imaginary race of brutish creatures.
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| Sun (Kalgoorlie, WA : 1939), Sunday 15 October 1939, |
