From a pronunciation spelling of Australian spoken with this accent. Coined by “Afferbeck Lauder” (Alastair Ardoch Morrison) and popularised with his 1965 book Let Stalk Strine. Australian from 1965.
Meanings
(humorous, informal) An Australian.
The Strines I met were fierce about having a good time […] 2025, Lynne Tillman, Thrilled to Death: Selected Stories, page 220:
From a pronunciation spelling of Australian spoken with this accent. Coined by “Afferbeck Lauder” (Alastair Ardoch Morrison) and popularised with his 1965 book Let Stalk Strine. Australian from 1965.
Meanings
(Australia, New-Zealand, UK, humorous, informal) Broad Australian English.
Dell’Oso describes the encounter of an Asian woman with a surly bus driver whose only language is Strine (a form of Australian English, barely intelligible to many of the native-speakers). 1992, Gillian Bottomley, From Another Place: Migration and the Politics of Culture, published 2009, page 133:
Several Strine forms depend on an assumed equivalence between Strine fortis consonants and Cultivated/RP lenis ones, thus garbler mince (couple of minutes), egg jelly (actually). It is doubtful whether this reflects any real phonetic difference. 1982, J. C. Wells, Accents of English, volume 3: Beyond the British Isles, page 595:
A TEAM at Griffith University in Brisbane is working on the development of what the university’s newspaper calls a bionic snorter. Translating into English from Strine, this is a bionic hooter, conk, bugle or nose. 1989 July 8, “Ariadne”, in New Scientist, page 120: