tucker n.
1. a meal.
 | Launceston Advertiser 24 Oct. 4/3: The Bushrangers [...] then asked for a ‘tucker,’ (the slang word for a meal,) which was supplied. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Bell’s Life in Sydney 16 Mar. 3/3: He then seized a magnificent sirloin of beef, with potatoes and Yorkshire pudding to match, with which he gallopped [sic] off off into the stable followed by his disconsolate master whose hopes of a ‘tucker’ now appeared somewhat mythical. |
2. (Aus./N.Z.) food, rations; also fig., i.e. a profit (see cite 1895), and attrib.
| Adelaide Morn. Chron. (SA) 5 July 3/2: [W]e resolved only to take only the most necessary ‘swag and tucker,’ as the colonists, in their semi-convict slang, denominate luggage and food. | |
| Queen of the South 148: I could take kindly to a mouthful of tucker. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | Colonist (Nelson, NZ) 25 Sept. 3/2: He said he had no money to buy ‘tucker’. ‘Tucker’ means food. | |
| Knocking About in N.Z. vii: The creature sustains life on ‘forty pounds a-year and his tucker.’. | |
| Term of His Natural Life (1897) 137: If he’d not refused to see the tucker ashore, he might ha’ got off with a whole skin. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 20 Mar. 2/3: I know a man who went to England and won, and only got his tucker and a fiver. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Mohawks II 175: The Dowager, holding out her glass, and leaning across the table with a freedom of attitude which accentuated the absence of tucker. | |
| ‘The Drover’s Wife’ in Roderick (1972) 50: A gallows-faced swagman [...] threw his swag down on the verandah and demanded tucker. | |
| Riverina Recorder (Moulamein, NSW) 15 May 2/7: Harry Hearle cannot make ‘tucker’ out of his contract for limestone metal [...] the last man who did it [...] could hardly make it pay. | |
| Boy’s Own Paper 27 Apr. 473: Say I sent you, they will give you some – ‘tucker.’. | |
| Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 17 Apr. 1/2: One bellicose bookie bloke [...] roared like as if he had just escaped from the Zoo and was hungry at tucker time. | |
| ‘Man Who Humps his Drum’ Ballads About Business and Back-Block Life 83: To be in time for tucker I can travel like a tyke. | |
| On the Anzac Trail 7: The tucker was really good and there was plenty of it. | |
| Aus. Felix (1971) 115: He sat over his account book. The pages were black with bad debts for ‘tucker.’. | |
| Working Bullocks 42: We’ll take a bit of tucker with us. | |
| Capricornia (1939) 26: I give you plenty tucker, plenty bacca, plenty everything. | |
| Battlers 120: ‘He’s got to feed us. In or out. It don’t matter to us.’ ‘Why, the best tucker I ever ate’. | |
| For the Rest of Our Lives 86: Brought you a bit of tucker, sir. And a drop of tea. | |
| Tree of Man (1956) 361: ‘This is a bit of tucker, dear,’ said the mother, who had forgotten what pleasure she would have in watching him eat. | |
| Yarns of Billy Borker 25: What was the tucker like in Paris? | |
| Living Black 103: No, I want some tucker, I’m hungry! | |
| (con. 1959) Up the Cross 75: Preparing tucker and the like or keeping his china’s boat spick ’n’ span. | |
| Songlines 76: ‘Tucker for my old men,’ said Arkady. [...] ‘They could eat a whole cow for supper.’. | |
| Llama Parlour 11: If we’d grown up eating Russian tucker, watching Russian telly, wearing Russian clobber [...] the rest of the world would reckon we’d been conquered and brainwashed. | |
| Dead Point (2008) [ebook] What’s the fat content of Kashboli tucker? | |
| Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 217: tucker Food, originally goldminers’ rations. Hence tuckertime for mealtime, unless one is unfortunately tuckerless. ANZ. | |
| Curious Incident of the Dog 55: Let’s rustle up some tucker. | |
| Viva La Madness 170: You eating that bitta tucker, Roy? | |
| Tales of the Honey Badger [ebook] I was hard on the tooth from day one, loved the tucker and loved life. | |
| Tales of the Honey Badger [ebook] There was a tucker joint that went by the name of ‘Five O’s’. | |
| Opal Country 128: ‘He reckons the tucker is better at Cuttamulla’. |
In compounds
a bag in which one carries supplies.
| McIvor Times (Heathcote., Vic.) 2 June 2/6: [T]he only bag they want is what is called in colonial slang is [sic] a ‘tucker bag’. | |
| Cobbers 42: Where’s that jolly jumbuck you’ve got in your tucker-bag? / You’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me! | |
| Shiralee 24: He [...] took out tin plates and tin mugs from the tucker-bag. | |
| Barcoo Salute 135: Some pushed barrows carrying their swags, tools and tucker-bags. |
(Aus./N.Z.) the anus (occas. the mouth).
| Ridgey-Didge Oz Jack Lang 49: Tucker Chute Anus. |
1. a cook, esp. institutional.
| Ridgey-Didge Oz Jack Lang 47: Tucker Fucker Cook. | |
| Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 115/2: tucker fucker army cook. | |
| Aus. Prison Sl. Gloss. 🌐 Tucker fucker. The prison cook. | |
| Australian 24–5 Nov. n.p.: An example of an Australian colloquialism that has moved with time is ‘tucker-f—er’, a term used initially for a cook, particularly the kind of second-rate cook who churned out meals in institutions [...] it has become another name for tomato sauce and is another term for the microwave oven, both for obvious reasons. | |
| Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 194/1: tucker fucker n. an inmate who works in the prison kitchen. | |
| Last Seaman 121: Telling you, mate, eat the tucker-fucker’s curry take the risk. |
2. tomato sauce.
| Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 210: TF Tomato flavouring, if you are being polite; tucker fucker, if you are not. |
3. a microwave.
| posting at www.sadlyno.com 30 Mar. 🌐 Meanwhile, cut the asparagus into 1 1/2 inch pieces and microwave on high for 2–3 minutes. Saute until the asparagus is cooked. — 2–3 minutes in the tucker fucker and she wants more cooking!? Poor bastards. | |
| posting at www.projectwedding.com 18 Sept. 🌐 My dad’s second wife was from Australia, and she used to call the microwave the ‘tucker fucker.’. |
4. a refrigerator.
| (ref. to c.2015) comment to https://jonathongreen.substack.com 16 Aug. 🌐 Pleased to see the phrae [sic] ‘tucker fucker’ but have always assumed it referred only to a refrigerator, or ice box. I first heard it around ten years ago, used by the legendary chatelaine Roxy Beaujolais [...] She's from New Zealand originally. |
(Aus./N.Z.) a poorly paid job (which just covers the cost of one’s rations).
| Kullark 60: That was only a tucker job anyway. |
(Aus.) a café, a restaurant; anywhere that provides food, e.g. a farm or sheep station.
| Sun. Times (Perth) 10 Dec. 95/2: We’ll run the tucker-joints ourselves and stoke you for five-and-twenty bob. | |
| Sun. Times (Perth) 25 June 6s/7: ‘Square Dinkum Tucker Joint’. There is likewise [...] ‘Bonza Beer Joint’. | |
| Western Mail 2 Dec. 14/3: Whalers and bagmen unanimously agreed that old McPherson’s station was the best ‘tucker joint’ on the river. | |
| Sun. Times (Perth) 21 Sept. 4/7: I didn’t know that there bloke wot runs the tucker joint was a great geologist [...] ‘someone that keeps a cafe’. | |
| Western Mail 7 Feb. 9/4: If you ask a station hand what sort of a place so and so is to work on, he will tell you it is a good or bad ‘tucker joint’ as the case may be. | |
| Western Mail (Perth) 30 Jan. 8/1: You keeps going to the same tucker-joint [...] which, of course, is more trade for the hotel. |
(Aus./N.Z.) a pittance.
| Silent Sea I 236: He had gone almost hungry, certainly very dirty, and in very broken boots, once when he was working in a poor patch of country, which did not yield ‘tucker’ money [AND]. | |
| Prospecting for Gold 3: You of course have the chance of winning a little gold from the start, ‘tucker money.’. | |
| Vision Splendid 98: It’s only tucker money, but Ettrick agreed to do the job for a tenner and situated as I am I could hardly ask for more. |
(Aus.) the throat; the digestive system.
| Sun. Times (Perth) 1 Mar. 4/8: No viscera vile near his stomach was stored, / No gorge near his tucker-tube lay. |
In phrases
food that can be found among the natural flora and fauna existing in the bush.
| Indep. Rev. 12 Aug. 6: He was living on unemployment benefits and ‘bush tucker.’. |
to earn (at least enough for) one’s bed and board.
| Wild Life in the Aus. Bush 135: So long as you [...] do enough to earn your tucker, he don’t care a straw. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 13 Dec. 21/2: She earned her pea-soup making ‘dandie funk,’ ‘dog’s body’ and ‘cracker hash,’ and doing tailor’s work on our clobber as wanted mending. | |
| Memories of a Magistrate 78: Here and there a digger could still make his tucker by sluicing silt in some remote valley. | |
| Brigalow 156: You can earn your tucker now by carrying the waterbag. | |
| River Rules My Life 98: You wouldn’t earn your tucker as a packy. | |
| Million Wild Acres 230: Sandy had replied ‘Go and earn your tucker, you black bastard, the same as I have to do.’ They found him at work in his vineyard. |
starvation; also attrib.
| Moleskin Joe 74: I’ve done a short tucker stretch for three weeks, and so I’m chancin’ my arm on Glencorrie, for a wee while. |