Australian English: rort

Australians like to see themselves as “easygoing” and “laid-back”… but are we really? Here’s something: bring in then the equally important yet essentially conditional Australian value of “a fair go” being violated and then you’ll see this supposedly intrinsic Aussie nature of being easygoing and laid-back (which, coincidentally, was originally a 1930s US jazz term meaning “lagging behind the main beat” and only really became mainstream worldwide in the early 1970s) quickly go out the window. And nothing does this more to Aussies than when they find out someone or some entity has been “rorting the system”. Mind you, many Aussies wouldn’t mind if their job was “a bit of a rort” (i.e. “not challenging”) allowing them to be truly easygoing and laid-back at work.

So what does this word “rort” actually mean in Australian English?

Going by the Macquarie Dictionary, Australia’s most used dictionary for its own dialect of English, it says the following:

rort

/rɔt/ (say rawt)

–noun 1. a scheme which manipulates the law or any set of regulations to gain a wrongful advantage.

example: The journalist uncovered a major rort involving politicians misusing their travel allowances.

–verb (t) 2. to gain control over (an organisation, as a branch of a political party) especially by falsifying records (very rarely used, I should add)

3. to take wrongful advantage of; pervert.

example: he was rorting the system (this is a set phrase heard far too often in Australia)

So a rort is all about manipulating a system to gain a wrongful advantage, particularly the embezzlement of public funds or, more generally, a systemic and organised illegal practice.

Likewise, you can also be rorted, meaning that you were the victim of a rort or, more generally, cheated.

See it as the Aussie way of saying “swindle”.

This once slang term, in usage since at least the 1910s, became standard in Australian English in the mid-1990s after the much-publicised Sports Rorts Affair involving then Australian Sports Minister Roz Kelly and her infamous “great big whiteboard”. Since then, there has been a long and constant line of Australian politicians and other office holders who’ve been caught rorting the system or some company has been doing tax rorts, with the news headlines reporting accordingly.

Rort is uniquely Australian and used very regularly. In fact, this is like spruik in that nearly all Aussies are unaware that other English-speakers do not have this term in their vocabulary nor have any idea of what it means.

However, rort in Australia also had another meaning in the past.

–noun 1. (dated) a wild party.

So this gets back to the easygoing and laid-back. But trust me, you won’t get many Aussies understanding this term anymore, so best not use it as they’ll otherwise think you’re talking about the bad form of rort if you do.

So where did the term rort come from?

According to both the Australian National Dictionary and the Macquarie Dictionary, the “swindle” sense likely is a respelling of the archaic English word wrought, the former past tense form and participle of the verb to work, but using its underworld slang meaning: “to effect an illegal or fraudulent scheme”. Now think about… how did European-colonised Australia start off as? Yes, as a penal colony full of Cockney and Irish prisoners, so this makes sense.

Wrought these days is primarily used as an adjective meaning “fashioned or formed, resulting from or having been subjected to working or manufacturing; or produced or shaped by beating with a hammer”, e.g. wrought iron. And then there’s also the phrase wrought havoc, meaning “to have made a complete mess of [something]”, e.g. The children wrought havoc in the kitchen. Here, though, the present tense is not work but wreak.

As for the party sense, it most likely originated as a back-formation of the old British (particularly London) slang word rorty, meaning boisterous, ebullient, coarse or uncouth. It’s speculated that this term is an alteration of roary in a rhyme with Tory, and considering what has been said about some of the lewd shenanigans that have taken place at London’s Carlton Club, this fits.

Rather interestingly, if we go over the Tasman Sea to Aotearoa/New Zealand, we see that the Kiwis also have their own meaning of rort: an act of sexual intercourse (noun) or to have sexual intercourse with [subject] (verb). This then has the same meaning as that other Kiwi (and Aussie) slang term root. Perhaps a connection?

So let’s demand no more rorting of the system! No more rorts! And may no-one be rorted or else we’ll wreak havoc. Let’s get back to being easygoing and laid-back then.

But don't be laid-back when it comes to your text and copy. Best get an expert like me to check what you have for your Australian audience. Email me at info@nicknasev.com and let's talk.

Photo credit: Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash