bodgie
English
Etymology
From bodg(er) + -ie.
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Noun
bodgie (plural bodgies)
- (Australia, New Zealand, slang) A member of a 1950s rock subculture; a teddy boy. [from 20th c.]
- Hyponym: milk-bar cowboy
- 1965, Mudrooroo, Wild Cat Falling, HarperCollins 2001, p. 17:
- I comb my hair as best I can. It is in a crew-cut ordered by the chief warder. He must have read that bodgies wear their hair long and decided to do his bit in the fight against juvenile delinquency.
- 1993, Lesley Johnson, The Modern Girl: Girlhood and Growing Up, page 100:
- Unlike McDonald, Manning noted with dismay that traditional relations between the sexes were broken down in bodgie groups. Bodgies, he argued, were disturbed youth, hooligans, maladjusted.
- 2001, Roy Shuker, Understanding Popular Music, page 223:
- The New Zealand public and press largely shared his view of bodgies as juvenile delinquents who posed a social threat. The bodgie soon became a national bogey man, with alarmist newspaper reports about bodgie behaviour.
- 2010, William Stokes, Westbrook, page 183:
- In Toowoomba, Magistrate Kearney was up in arms over the bodgies and widgies in town – those dressed-up teenagers with their spruced hair and polka-dot dresses who loitered around the city streets. They were seen as a threat to society.
Synonyms
- (member of 50s rock subculture): greaser (US), rocker (British)
Coordinate terms
- widgie (female)