Australia’s Democracy Sausage
Wednesday, January 4th, 2017January 4, 2017
On Dec. 14, 2016, the Australian National Dictionary Centre (ANDC) announced democracy sausage as its word of the year. The ANDC is a joint project between the Australian National University and Oxford University Press that studies Australian English, the language peculiar to the commonwealth “down under.”
The ANDC defines democracy sausage as “a barbecued sausage served on a slice of bread, bought at a polling booth sausage sizzle on election day.” Democracy sausages often come with fried onions and a choice of sauce. The term was first used in 2012, but it gained popularity during 2016 elections when several websites were established to help Australian voters find polling locations where sausages were sold.
Other terms in the running for word of the year included Ausexit (“the potential cutting of ties with the British monarchy, or the departure of Australia from the United Nations”), shoey (“the act of drinking an alcoholic beverage out of a shoe, especially to celebrate a sporting victory”), and smashed avo (“a popular café breakfast, typically consisting of a thick slice of toast topped with chopped or mashed seasoned avocado”).
The ANDC explained that two-word terms such as democracy sausage are considered a single word because they are compounds, or “a word made up of two or more existing words.” It points out that compound terms such as disc jockey or real estate have specific meanings that are not necessarily understood from knowing the meaning of each component word. The 2015 word of the year was sharing economy (“an economic system based on sharing of access to goods, resources, and services, typically by means of the Internet”).