pommie, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

pommie n.

also pom, pommey, pommy

[abbr. pomegranate n.; but note Aus. writer Henry Lawson, in a short story (1921): ‘An’ the Pommy he says “Pom-me-word” [i.e. ’pon my word] — and that’s how I think Pommies got their name’]

(Aus./N.Z.) a British person, usu. an immigrant.

1900		play title Pommy.
1912		Sun. Times (Perth) 21 Jan. 13/3: We don’t understand his language too well, him being a ‘pommy’.
1913		Truth (Wellington) 15 Nov. 3/5: A little less archiepiscopal audacity on your part [...] would better become a four months' old priestly ‘Pommie,’ so to speak, than the bold bumptiousness of your tread-on-the-tail-of-me-coat tirades.
1913		Sun. Times (Perth) 11 May 11s/1: I had the misfortune to share my camp with a ‘Pommie-hater’ who was continually ‘slinging off’.
1913		Sport (Adelaide) 1 Nov. 6/4: Bill L, the pom, buys beer for the boss Saturday nights .
1915		C.E.W. Bean Anzac Book 31/2: ‘Never met him, matey, but he is all right, you bet. A Pommy can’t go wrong out there [Victoria] if he isn’t too lazy to work.’ / ‘Ah, yes, he tells me they called ’im Pommy, but that they was good lads.’.
1918		J.S. Finney 21 Jan. diary 🌐 A Pommie sang ‘The Perfect Day’ and dropped his ‘h’s’ and put them in the wrong place.
1919		W.H. Downing Digger Dialects 38: pommy — An English soldier. [Ibid.] pom —See pommy.
1921		Eve. Post (Wellington) 3 Oct. 3/6: The Diggers will appear, to-night in a sketch, "The Pommie Bride,’ which has for its setting the backblocks of Australia.
1925		Truth (Brisbane) 1 Feb. 7/5: The pom put over the usual ‘too much boose’ story.
1926		K.S. Prichard Working Bullocks 54: Great sport for bloody pommies in this ’ere Gord’s own country.
1938		X. Herbert Capricornia (1939) 56: [He was] struggling [...] to keep his hands from choking the life out of a Lousy, Bloody, Pop-eyed Pommy.
1941		‘Oh! Fucking Tobruk’ in M. Page Kiss Me Goodnight, Sgt.-Major (1973) 79: The fucking pommies cramp your style.
1944		L. Glassop We Were the Rats 26: I seen ya score that century against the Poms that time.
1951		(con. 1941) E. Lambert Twenty Thousand Thieves 210: The Huns are seventy miles from Alex and the Poms have had it.
1951		Cusack & James Come in Spinner (1960) 45: I didn’t know your old man was a pommy.
1954		K. Amis letter 20 Dec. in Leader (2000) 418: I love imagining the cobberess saying to you ‘Fer a Pommie yer top-hole, sport’, and the cobber finding you on the job and talking about crook deals.
1960		A. Seymour One Day of the Year (1977) I i: The place is full of ’em. Poms and I-ties.
1960		B. Crump A Good Keen Man 131: He sounded like a pommie, but reckoned he came from the Argentine.
1970		N. Beagley Up and Down Under 38: I am not a ruddy Pommey.
1973		M. Harris Angry Eye 37: Poms winge, Australians get stuck into a problem.
1977		K. Gilbert Living Black 71: My sister, she married a Pommy. He came out here in the war.
1981		J. Sullivan ‘Go West Young Man’ Only Fools and Horses [TV script] Like you, you Pommy.
1985		B. Robinson Aussie Bull 23: [I]t’s a well known fact that a weak Australian can always beat a good Pom.
1987		B. Chatwin Songlines 62: ‘You and me could be mates,’ [...] he said, ‘You’re not a whingeing Pom, Bru.’.
1993		K. Lette Foetal Attraction (1994) 10: No daughter of mine will ever be susceptible to a bad-punning Pom with straight teeth.
1996		Penguin Bk of More Aus. Jokes 241: The pommy was not long in Australia before he heard that the duck-shooting season was about to start.
1999		Guardian G2 30 June 3: Chants of ‘Pommie go home’.
2000		Guardian G2 6 Jan. 19: Three pommies joined together to name [...] Bradman for the great Australian cricketer.
2004		T. Winton ‘Cockleshell’ in Turning (2005) 120: We were fresh off the boat, I spose, she said. [...] Real Poms, he murmurs.
2006		R. Hughes Things I Didn’t Know (2007) 116: Calling someone a Pommy, a bloody Pom, or a Pommy bastard was [...] a form of preemptive condescension.
2017		G. Gilmore Headland [ebook] ‘Mr Pommie Smith or whatever your name is’.
2021		P. Papathanasiou Stoning 150: Her forebears hailed from the British Isles as so-called Ten Pound Poms.

In compounds

pommie-bashing (n.) (also pommy-bashing) [bash v. (8)]

(Aus./N.Z.) verbal abuse of the British (incl. immigrants) (occas. affectionate).

1973		Punch CCLXIV 11/2: Pommy-bashing is a popular sport in Australia right now.
1978		Hansard CCCXLII 469: I saw a banner headline in the Cape Argus reading: ‘Pommie- bashing, Australia’s national pastime’.
1987		National Business Rev. 10 July 49: Apart from pommie-bashing, the commentators in the world cup matches spent an extraordinary amount of time telling viewers what they could easily see [DNZE].
1994		G. Turner Making It National 57: The President of the Commission [...] has admitted deliberately provoking Her Majesty’s Government with some strategic pommy-bashing.
2006		Daily Tel. 16 Nov. 🌐 And the imminence of the first Test (which starts a week on Thursday) has provided the ammunition for some unusually early rounds of Pommy-bashing.

Pommieland (n.) (also Pomland, Pommyland)

(Aus.) Britain.

1914		Sport (Adelaide) 4/5: Yorke is thinking of going back to Pommyland.
1938		Mirror (Perth) 29 Jan. 11/3: They are the men who [...] will sail to Pommieland to keep the kangarooster’s tail up.
1952		Advertiser (Adelaide) 13 Mar. 4/3: If someone in Pommie-land offered us a home [...] I think we couldput up with the cold.
1961		Aus. Women’s Wkly 13 Dec. 7/5: I’ll have to take that back to Pomieland.
1963–74		B. Humphries Barry McKenzie [comic strip] in Complete Barry McKenzie (1988) 80: I’ve never been overseas before — youse wouldn’t count Pom-land. [Ibid.] 101: They crawl back to Pommyland and see what a shithouse it is.
1967		F.J. Hardy in Great Aus. Lover Stories 61: [He] ended up as some kind of wharfie over in Pommy Land.
1970		Galton & Simpson ‘Cuckoo in the Nest’ Steptoe and Son [TV script] I think it’s time to settle down – and where better than good old Pommieland.
1982		dedication in N. Keesing Lily on the Dustbin [handwritten] Anetta. Wishing you every happiness in ‘Pommieland’. Au Revoir. Cheryl.
1996		Penguin Bk of More Aus. Jokes 236: I was in pommyland and invited to the lord of the manor’s ball.
2006		P. Wilson Faces in the Street 404: He didn’t realise that a fire can get away on a man almost as quickly in Pommyland as it can out near the Black Stump.