Skip to main content
Menu

The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders both past and present.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that this website contains images of deceased persons.

Humdinger

by Angus Trumble, 7 May 2018

Trumble and Borthwick families (Mum front right, Angus smallest), ca. 1968

At a meeting by teleconference of the National Portrait Gallery Foundation last week, I found myself reporting that our forthcoming exhibition So Fine is going to be “a humdinger,” whereupon Tim Fairfax chuckled and said that he hadn’t heard that expression for years.

Afterwards, I wondered where on earth I ever picked up humdinger. Upon much reflection over the weekend, I’m pretty sure I got it from Mum, whose vocabulary was rich in unusual East Gippsland phrases. So I did some digging.

I had thought that humdinger might turn out to be a rather quaint Edwardian Australianism, but it’s not in the Australian National Dictionary. Dinger certainly is there (vol. 1, p. 496): (Chiefly South Australian), a slingshot or the equivalent of a shanghai, together with the following charming citation (from the Australian Magazine [February, 2006]), viz.: “In the 1960s a Canberra Times photographer snapped Dame Pattie Menzies ‘knocking off spoggies with a dinger’ when currawongs plundered her vegie patch.” Spoggies, it turns out (vol. 2, p. 1477), are in fact sparrows.

Anyhow, moving farther afield, humdinger was not in Hobson-Jobson (Anglo-Indian Glossary), and nor was it in Eric Partridge (Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English). Sure enough, however, humdinger is in the huge second ed. of the OED (isn’t everything?): Etymology unknown “slang (orig. U.S.)”: “A remarkable or outstanding person or thing, anything of notable excellence.” So far the earliest documented occurrence was printed in 1905.

A second, more specialised definition (in electronics) clearly sprang from the first: “A voltage divider connected across the heater circuit of a valve with the variable tap connected to a source of fixed potential, so that the hum introduced by the heater can be reduced by suitably biasing it with respect to the cathode.” Well, yes—but the interesting part is that the earliest citation occurs in the Admiralty Handbook (1938), so humdinger certainly had currency in the navy. So maybe I got it from Dad.

At length, however, I found that Green’s Dictionary of Slang locates humdinger to Nebraska in that same year of 1905—“she’s a humdinger”—and guesses, moreover, that this (originally hyphenated) term came from hummer (1876, someone or something exceptional of their type) + the seventeenth-century English ding (v.), viz. to knock down. I’m not so sure but, so far as purely speculative etymologies are concerned, that one is a humdinger—as indeed So Fine is sure to be.

I mentioned Mum’s way with unusual East Gippsland words and phrases. One stands out. If something had not happened for an awfully long time, she used to say it hadn’t happened for ages, “not since the cow kicked auntie.” Helen was born in 1926 and spent the first ten years of her life on a sheep property at Fulham, a few miles west of Sale, at which point the family moved to Geelong, where she spent the rest of her childhood. Some years ago the late Frederick Ludowyk graciously published my appeal for any information about this odd phrase in Ozwords, the Australian National Dictionary Centre’s then newsletter (and now blog), but alas it garnered no response. This made me wonder whether there ever was a particular cow (and/or auntie) to whom the formulation owes its existence, Mrs. O’Leary-style, for it does not seem to have had any wider currency, at least not since the cow kicked auntie.

© National Portrait Gallery 2024
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia

Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196

The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.

This website comprises and contains copyrighted materials and works. Copyright in all materials and/or works comprising or contained within this website remains with the National Portrait Gallery and other copyright owners as specified.

The National Portrait Gallery respects the artistic and intellectual property rights of others. The use of images of works of art reproduced on this website and all other content may be restricted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Requests for a reproduction of a work of art or other content can be made through a Reproduction request. For further information please contact NPG Copyright.

The National Portrait Gallery is an Australian Government Agency