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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

hard yakka en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • /hɑːd ˈjækə/
  • (Australia) audio

Etymology

From hard + yakka, from Yagara yaga (“work”).

Meanings

  1. (Australia, New-Zealand, colloquial, uncountable) Hard work.
    • somebody sits down and does the solid, hard yakka of talking his way through with the waterside workers and with the union movement generally 1991, Kim Beazley, Australian House of Representatives
    • At the age of sixteen, boy it was hard yakka, pouring fifty ton of red hot molten gun metal from the big firebrick lined oil furnace almost every day of the working week. 1998, Keith B. Saunders, Myall Road, page 37:
    • The men who did all the hard yakka believed in a short cut – shoot the bastards; it was cheaper and easier. 1988, Tom Cole, Hell West and Crooked, page 247: