Back in 2015 I linked to Meanings and origins of Australian words and idioms to bring you the word neenish, but not only have there been quite a few updates since then (like the entry for that very word, under n) but the URL itself has changed, so I figure it’s time to repost it. Here’s the first entry on the A page:
acca
Michael Davie in ‘Going from A to Z forever’ (an article on the 2nd edition of the Oxford English Dictionary), Age, Saturday Extra, 1 April 1989, writes of his visit to the dictionary section of Oxford University Press:
Before I left, Weiner [one of the two editors of the OED] said he remembered how baffled he had been the first time he heard an Australian talk about the ‘arvo’. Australians used the -o suffix a lot, he reflected. Arvo, smoko, garbo, journo. But not all -o words were Australian, said Simpson [the other of the two editors]: eg ‘aggro’ and ‘cheapo’. I asked if they were familiar with the Oz usage ‘acco’, meaning ‘academic’. They liked that. I hoped, after I left, they would enter it on one of their little slips and add it to their gigantic compost heap – a candidate for admission to the next edition.
We trust that Edmund Weiner and John Simpson did not take a citation, since the Australian abbreviation of academic is not acco but acca (sometimes spelt acker).
The abbreviation first appears in Meanjin (Melbourne, 1977), where Canberra historian Ken Inglis has an article titled ‘Accas and Ockers: Australia’s New Dictionaries’. The editor of Meanjin, Jim Davidson, adds a footnote: ‘acca (slightly derogatory) 1, noun An academic rather than an intellectual, particularly adept at manipulating trendiologies, usually with full scholarly apparatus. Hence 2, noun A particularly sterile piece of academic writing.’ The evidence has become less frequent in recent years.
1993 Age (Melbourne) 24 December: The way such festivals bring together writers, publishers and accas, making them all accountable to the reader – the audience – gives them real value.
What a useful word! The OED is ignorant of it in all its forms, though they have acker ‘A strong or turbulent current in the sea; a flood tide (Obsolete); A current in a river, etc.; a ripple, furrow, or disturbance of the surface of water, a ‘cat’s paw’ (Now rare)” (“Of uncertain origin”) and acker ‘A piastre; gen. Usually in plural. Coins, banknotes, cash; money,’ for which the following amusing etymology is provided:
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