fair dinkum

Fair dinkum means genuine, honest or true. “Fair dinkum?” means “seriously? are you telling the truth?”, and a “fair dinkum Aussie” is the real deal.

What fair dinkum means

Dictionary.com defines dinkum, and fair dinkum, as genuine or authentic. Wiktionary adds the two main ways it’s used: as an adjective (“he’s fair dinkum”, he’s honest) and as an adverb or question (“fair dinkum, I saw it myself”; “you won the lottery? Fair dinkum?”). The meaning shifts a little with tone: said flatly it’s a promise, said with rising pitch it’s disbelief.

It’s one of the best-known pieces of Australian English, and it still turns up in the news: Dictionary.com quotes recent BBC reports using it, from a “fair dinkum stampede” of animals on a golf course to “fair dinkum Australians.”

Examples

• “Is that a fair dinkum kangaroo in your yard?”
• “Fair dinkum, mate, I didn’t touch your ute.”
• “She’s a fair dinkum legend.”

Where it came from

It’s old. Wikipedia points to an 1879 issue of the Sydney Evening News as one of the earliest references, and traces the word to an extinct dialect word from England’s East Midlands, where dinkum or dincum meant hard work or fair work. Dictionary.com points the same way, to Lincolnshire dialect. That was also the first meaning in Australia: hard work, or a fair share of it, and from there anything honest and genuine.

Related terms

• Good on ya: well done.
• Bloke: a man.
• Bogan: an unrefined person.
• No cap: the Gen Z version of “for real.”

See more terms like this in our Australian slang guide.