What does it mean to bandicoot? Would you be insulted to be called a bush foal? Or perhaps you know the meaning of a cock-eyed bob, a methodist gate or rat-and-fowl?
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Are there portholes in your coffin?
If you are struggling, it might be reasonable to think that our rich vocabulary, from a wide diversity of sources over more than two centuries, could be under threat.
Author Hugh Lunn, writing in Lost for Words in 2006, suggested the language was in its final death throews and beyond resuscitation.
But now it seems there is new hope. Our language is in a permanent state of transformation, with slang the fastest-changing element of all, Journalist and 2CH's Sunday night program presenter Kel Richards says. Aussie kids are displaying the same verbal inventiveness as their grandparents.
"We may no longer be using cobber as part of our everyday speech, but we are constantly coining new and distinctively Australian expressions that display an unending verbal inventiveness," he writes in his new book The Story of Australian English, to be published next week.
"Most of the words we use most of the time we don't know where it comes from. We have absorbed them by a process of osmosis and we just use them."
Richards also rejects the idea that "our distinctive lingo is being drowned under a tsunami of Yankee-speak". Instead, we pick and choose the Americanisms we want and reject others, he says.
Americans say drug stores. We say chemists. We fill up with petrol while Americans say gas.
That selectivity is an argument for the resilience of Aussie English, he says.
Also flowing quietly beneath the surface of even the most urban and streetwise Aussies is a deep reservoir of what he calls OBV – old bush vernacular.
"Few Aussies speak OBV all the time. Those who do tend to wear blue singlets, drive utes and listen to John Williamson and Slim Dusty. But for all of us that reservoir is there to draw upon."
There are plenty examples of our selectivity in what we choose to adopt he tells Fairfax Media.
"Most people over 40 pronounce schedule as I do with an 'sh'. Most people under 40 pronounce it with an 'sk'. That's not Americanisation, that's just a living language that changes and it's the conversational group that you are in that does the changing.
"On the 26 January 1788 you had people from Dorset and Norfolk, Scotland and Wales and Devonshire all thrust together trying to understand each other. That was an immensely powerful influence. Part of what it did was to produce a levelling which helped to produce the Australian accent, but also made people very aware of language. If you are trying to understand the bloke next to you and he is speaking in an odd way you become extremely conscious of language."
But what of the shortening of words like ambulance, service station and garbage? Should that be allowed?
"I am fascinated by the way the language works and I am not approving or disapproving of it," he said.
"When you come to the abbreviation of the language, which is a very powerful Australian characteristic, maybe it is laziness but I think it is more community signalling. It has a lot to do with saying: 'You are part of our club', that we recognise you as belonging to our language community.
"I had a schoolteacher talk about why Australians shorten words and his theory was it's because in the outback there's dust in the wind and you have got to keep your mouth closed as much as possible. I think that's a fascinating theory but it's probably absolute rubbish."
"It's a living language and bits of it go away and new bits come in. When I was a kid my mother or aunts would have referred to a handbag or a purse as a billy bag. I think that's gone. I don't know of any kids when they double someone else on their push bike saying 'I'll give you a dink' any more."
"Most people don't know the origins of most words. Most of the language we use most of the time we don't know where it comes from. We have absorbed them by a process of osmosis and we just use them."
The infant Aussie language was born from four different elements – regional English dialects; the flash language or slang developed by crooks, so honest folk couldn't understand them; Aboriginal words and convict terms. To that with time were added words from the bush, Australian gold rushes, larrikin lingo, digger dialects and others.
"I was a bit surprised at how linguistically inventive Queensland was, although it may be just that I am from NSW and I didn't know them," Mr Richards said..
"Queensland, I think, was the origin of YMCA. 'What's for dinner ... YMCA'. Yesterday's muck cooked again. It was a Queensland country town that came up with the expression 'a methodist's gate'.
"You know what farm gates are like, they can be really hard to open and close because they are falling off the hinges. A methodist gate is a farm gate that is so hard to open or close that only a methodist can do it without swearing."
The Story of Australian English is published by NewSouth and released into stores this week.
