Green’s Dictionary of Slang

ocker n.

[the character Ocker orig. portrayed by actor Ron Frazer (1924–83) in the TV series The Mavis Bramston Show (1965–8)]

1. (Aus.) a boorish, loutish, unsophisticated, ultra-nationalistic Australian, whose rise, and celebration, coincided with Gough Whitlam’s Labour government (1972–5).

[[Aus]J. Cleary Sundowners 151: ‘Keep going, Ocker,’ Bluey said. ‘We didn’t know you were a philosopher.’].
[Aus]B. Humphries Barry McKenzie [comic strip] in Complete Barry McKenzie (1988) 123: Don’t talk to your father like that you foul-mouth ocker!
[Aus]Aus. Women’s Wkly 35May 3/3: The okker showed up backstage .
[Aus]Aus. Women’s Wkly 30 Nov. 14/3: Norm [...] The ocker who spends most of his life in an easy chair drinking from a can and with his eyes glued to TV sport.
[Aus]Tracks (Aus.) Oct. 87: Like any normal, sporty kind of girl my mouth started watering and, after bolting to the shop to buy one [a pie], I was about to take my first bite when I heard this cry of bushpig. Then one of the guys came up to me and said, ‘God – you’re the biggest ocker I’ve ever seen. Sure you’re going to eat a pie.’ [Moore 1993].
[Aus]G. Seal Lingo 121: Sometime during the late 1960s and early 1970s a term long used in Australia as a nickname abbreviation for Oscar became the descriptor for the crude, grog-sodden, beer-gutted sort of bloke who lived next door. The ocker is generally said to have obtruded himself into public view through the popular satirical television series ‘The Mavis Bramston Show’ (1965–68) in the form of a character played by the late Ron Frazer. By the early 1970s ocker was threatening bloke as a central Lingoism.
[NZ]McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 146: Ocker An Australian.
[NZ]C. Marriner Southern Style 10: I fancied a drinking buddy and a pub session as much as any Ocker in a foreign city.
[Aus]L. Redhead Thrill City [ebook] He was wellspoken. Educated with just a hint of ocker.

2. in attrib. use fo sense 1.

[Aus]Aus. Women’s Wkly 17 Nov. 4/2: She must certainly not have an ‘okker’ accent.
[Aus]Aus. Women’s Wkly 30 May 14/2: He planned most of the more controversial selling campaigns, including the ‘okker trend’.

3. anyone seen as boorishly nationalistic.

[Aus]Kings Cross Whisper (Sydney) li 3/3: This was the theme in the winter showing of fashion designer Fred ‘Ocker’ Smith.
[Aus]J. Hibberd Memoirs of an Old Bastard 75: Penelope wished to know whether Padlock fitted the description of ‘an ocker’.

4. Australian English.

[Aus]Aus. Women’s Wkly 30 Nov. 49/1: Fluent Okker is more my line these days.
[Aus]Penguin Bk of More Aus. Jokes 346: ‘Fish and Chips,’ he demanded of the shopkeeper in his best Ocker.

In derivatives

ockerdom (n.)

(Aus.) the world of the ocker.

[Aus]Meanjin Quarterly (Melbourne) XXXIII 445: In him we glimpse how, when the war began, innocence and ockerdom merged to produce adventurism.
[US]Amer. Journal Family Therapy XI 19: The men of the family taking refuge in a self-conscious masculinity around sport, ‘ockerdom’ and alcohol as compensation.
[NZ]N. Perry Hyperreality and Global Culture 95: [The] sardonic boorishness and obligatory Ockerdom of Australian beer commercials.
[UK]R. Wajnryb Cheerio Tom, Dick and Harry 58: I’m not suggesting that ockerdom itself has vanished from Australia.
ockerish (adj.)

having the charateristics of a boor.

[Aus]Aus. Women’s Wkly 7 Aug. 64: [He] makes Australia look very Ockerish, if vou know what I mean.
[Aus]Filmnews (Sydney) 1 Sept. 17: Enter Enter new tenant Frank (a very funny and true turn from John Hargreaves), a loud, Ockerish petty crim.
[Aus]Woroni (Canberra, ACT) 29 May 18: I predict, then, that beers of the future will move away from the simplified ockerish titles of the past.
ockerism (n.)

(Aus.) boorish behaviour; oafish self-satisfaction.

[UK]Bedside Guardian 102: The comic, Paul Hogan [...] has a good claim to be the founder of Ockerism.
[Aus]P. McGillick Jack Hibberd 46: Ockerism seems to derive from an acute inferiority complex.
[Aus]G. Seal Lingo 121: The popularity and all-encompassing nature of this new blokism, almost forgotten today, can be glimpsed in the rapidity with which the term spread and the number of variant forms it produced [...] ockerism.
[Aus]G. Leitner Australia’s Many Voices 220: For him ockerism was not the beer-swelling, boastful Australian.
ockerization (n.)

(Aus.) vulgarization.

[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Sept. 21/1: The annual general meeting of the Australian Society of Authors threw up its hands in horror at the idea, many a silver-haired lady and tweedy gentleman getting up to protest at the ockerization of modem society.
ockerized (adj.)

(Aus.) vulgarized.

K. Garvey Tales of my Uncle Harry 8: Both would writhe in their graves if they could see some of the modernized, deodorized, glamorized, Americanized, televisized [sic], Ockerized, sorial-serviceized [sic], Aussies of the present permissive decadent era [AND].