POPULAR WAR TERM.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 236, 4 September 1929, Page 10

POPULAR WAR TERM.

ORIGIN OF “DIGGER.”

CONTROVERSY JLN AUSTRALIA

Since the Returned Soldiers’ League in Australia endeavoured recently, but without success, to solve the problem, there has been quite a spirited controversy in Sydney as to the origin of the term, “Bigger,” as applied to Australian and New Zealand soldiers who took part in the Great War in Europe. Captain C. Bean, official historian of the Australian Imperial Eorce, is the authority for the statement that the word, said to have been used originally among gumdiggers in the North of New Zealand —this does not seem very convincing—became common among the soldiers in 1917, displacing the terms “cobber” and “mate,” and coming, during the third battle of Ypres, to denote an Australian or New Zealand private, much as “Tommy” denoted a British soldier.

Others contend that the term “Digger” originated in Australia, long before the war, among men outback. One man says that it was a sergeant-major at the Liverpool camp in New South Wales who established the popularity of the word when he assembled squads, before putting them on trench with the command, “Come on, you diggers!”