nugget: Definition, Synonyms and Much More from Answers.com
- ️Wed Jul 01 2015
from Australian English
This word originated in Australia
During the California gold rush of 1848 and 1849, no one found even a single nugget. They found pieces of gold that we would now call nuggets, but there were as yet no such nuggets in the English language. That discovery was made at the other end of the earth, in another gold rush just a few years later. Australian speakers of English were able to turn dirt into gold, linguistically speaking.
Before the Australian gold rush of the early 1850s, nug was an obscure dialect word in England referring to a lump of dirt or other material. Someone must have transported it to Australia, added a second syllable, and applied it to the visible pieces of gold found by miners. In Australia, the term was used in print as early as 1851, when the gold rush in Victoria began.
George Francis Train, a "Yankee merchant" who went to Australia for the gold, wrote home to the Boston Post just two years later, in October 1853: "They have a slang language at the gold fields peculiar to that district. Tea and coffee are 'slingings,' 'swags' is the term for luggage and 'shiser' for an unprofitable hole. I believe 'nugget' is peculiarly Australian."
The English language of Australia arrived directly from the mother country, halfway around the world, starting with a shipload of criminals in 1788. The language that developed into present-day Australian English was somewhat disreputable, as were many of the early colonists, who were sent from England to Australia as punishment for their crimes.
Other Australian contributions to the English language include the Australian ballot (1888), so called because Australians were the first to use a secret ballot printed with all candidates' names. There are also many Australian terms having to do with bush life, including Aborigine (1864) for the original native peoples, bushed (1885) meaning "lost in the bush," and walkabout (1828), an Aborigine's temporary return to the bush after living in the English-speaking world. Australia's present population of nearly twenty million is mostly English speaking.
Dansk (Danish)
n. - klump, godbid, visdomsord, lille stykke paneret og stegt kød eller fisk
Nederlands (Dutch)
goudklomp, juweeltje (figuurlijk), klein hapje (b.v. bitterbal)
Deutsch (German)
n. - Klumpen, Goldklumpen
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ψήγμα πολύτιμου μετάλλου ή χρυσού (σε φυσική κατάσταση), (μτφ.) κάτι το πολύτιμο για το μέγεθός του
Português (Portuguese)
n. - pepita (f), filé (m)
Русский (Russian)
крупица ценного, самородок
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - klump, klimp
中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
天然金块, 珍品, 矿块, 珍闻
中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 天然金塊, 珍品, 礦塊, 珍聞
한국어 (Korean)
n. - (천연 귀금속의)덩어리
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 天然貴金属の塊り, 溶接ビード, 塊
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) كتله صلبه
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - גוש טבעי של מתכת יקרה, דבר בעל ערך יחסית לגודלו, גוש
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