A Kiwi Calls Her Yank Beau a “Wally”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

My name is Vanessa and I am in just out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I live between Door County, Wisconsin and Nashville, Tennessee.

So we’re just heading to the airport actually.

Oh, you live between those?

Yeah, I do.

I’m a Kiwi from New Zealand and I split my time between Nashville, Tennessee and Door County, Wisconsin.

Okay, well welcome to the show.

What can we do for you?

Well, I have a boyfriend and a couple of cats, and I call my boyfriend and one cat in particular a Wally fairly often.

And he questioned me one time about what Wally actually meant, and I wasn’t really able to explain it.

I could tell him what my sentiment was, but I couldn’t really explain actually what the word meant or where it came from.

I have a bunch of reference works on Kiwi slang and Australian slang and different things,

And I’ve done some digging on this word.

I found it as far back as the 1980s,

But I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s older,

But there’s a firm meaning of it as a silly, daft, or an epped person.

But it possibly goes back as far as the 1920s

With a more general meaning of an unfashionable person,

Although the evidence back to the 1920s is scant.

And by unfashionable person, I mean the kind of person who wears,

They’re kind of just out of touch with how they look,

And they’re wearing the wrong clothes at the wrong time and the wrong jacket, the wrong season, that sort of stuff.

And it’s not just New Zealand.

Also used in Australia, pretty much anywhere outside of North America in the English-speaking world.

You’ll hear it in the UK.

You might hear it in South Africa, of course, Australia, so forth.

Not in Canada, not in the United States.

As far as the origin, there’s three theories that the slang lexicon for Jonathan Green has proposed that I kind of like.

One of them is that it’s related to the British slang word for cucumber,

Wally, spelled a variety of ways, but also W-A-L-L-Y.

And a Wally, besides meaning a cucumber,

Perhaps means a green, unskilled, inexperienced person.

We call somebody green if they’re new at a job, right?

And likely to make mistakes.

But there’s also a Scottish word, Wally drag,

Meaning a runt or a poorly grown person

Or somebody who’s worthless or slovenly dirty,

That’s less likely because there’s already a Wally in Scots English,

Which has the opposite meaning of what you’re talking about.

It means fine, excellent, strong, great.

And then he’s got a third theory, which there’s no evidence for,

But I’m going to throw it out here.

There’s an Italian, a Naples dialect Italian word,

Guaglio, G-U-A-G-L-I-L means boy.

So I don’t know.

It sounds vaguely like Wally.

But really it’s origin unknown like a lot of slang most slang just kind of pops up

People don’t know i want to say vanessa you living in wisconsin and nashville you must have

Accent whiplash given that you speak with a kiwi kiwi accent and you live in two very distinct

American dialect regions yeah and i definitely have probably picked up elements of both accents

You know to americans here i sound very foreign but i know when i go back to new zealand everyone

Thinks I sound like American, which is not true.

My accent is just a mess.

That’s the fact of it.

But I bet it’s original and unique to you.

Exactly.

All right, you call us again sometime

And let us know what else you’ve come across.

These cultural collisions are super fascinating.

Yeah, totally.

I will.

I have to think of another insult that I use.

Yes, please.

Affectionate insult.

Take care of yourself, Vanessa.

Thank you so much for explaining.

It’s great.

All right.

Bye.

Take care.

We do enjoy hearing about those cultural collisions, whether they’re international or regional in this country.

So let us know your story, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.