'Skux', 'skody', 'pack a sad': the words and phrases that make us Kiwi
Can you encapsulate what it means to be Kiwi in 100 words? Writer Mark Broatch decided to find out.
Mark Broatch has taken on the mammoth task of choosing the top 100 words - and phrases - that really represent what it means to be from this land.
His list includes evergreens like ‘she'll be right’, ‘yeah nah’ and ‘bugger’, to the insults like ‘egg’, 'hua’ and ‘skody’.
Before he set out on his mammoth lexicological task, he wasn’t sure he’d even get to 100 he told RNZ’s Nine to Noon.
“Early on I thought, do we need a hundred? Could we get to a hundred? But in the end, it was easily done, and I had to leave a few, or fold a few into the other ones.”
Certain phrases for his book 100 Words That Make Us Kiwi chose themselves, he says.
“They had to be in like, ‘she'll be right’, and ‘sweet as’ and ‘yeah nah’. And then the other ones that were obvious is the things that we as Kiwis are known for, the number 8 wire.
“And then, you know, our extraordinary obsession with the colour black.”
While heaps of expressions are unique to New Zealand, Broatch says we share many with our Aussie cousins - although some remain contested.
Mark Broatch's collection of quintessential Kiwi words.
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“Pav’s in dispute and 'flat white's' in dispute and 'fair go'.”
One indisputably Kiwi phrase is ‘pack a sad’, he says.
“I just think pack a sad is just extraordinary. I mean, pack and you've made sad into this noun. I just love it.”
‘Yeah nah’ reflects a certain Kiwi reluctance to confront, he says.
Te reo Māori has entered the vernacular with about 35 words for every 1000 English words commonly used, he says.
“I don't think that's replicated anywhere. We use them every day without even thinking, in the newspapers, the magazines or online, we just say them like whenua and whānau.”
They fill a descriptive need, he says.
“What generally happens with words that come into English is that they fall into, I suppose you'd call it a semantic gap, where there's not another expression or word that's exactly the same.”
Kiwis have a love affair with the ‘sk’ sound, he says.
“Skody and skux and skerrick and skite, you know, we seem to be quite good at that.”
The etymological origin of skux is cloudy, he says.
“We think it comes from Samoan. And it means excellent. Kiritapu Allen, she famously went on TV with her outfit of the civil defence minister, and she said, ‘Oh, this is my skux outfit.’
“So, these things, they drift along, and then they get a little spike in use.”
Other phrases may well fall out of use, he says. Older Kiwis will remember the use of 'Clayton's', that came from an “ancient advert” for a drink, for example.
“'Clayton's' came to mean a fake thing, it was a 'Clayton's' something, an insincere attempt at something like a 'Clayton's' policy that the government did.”
