A lamington is an Australian culinary treat essentially consisting of sponge cake pieces dipped in runny chocolate and then rolled in desiccated coconut. And while this may seem comical in hindsight (something like the etymology of sandwich), it is thought to have been named for Lord Lamington 1860–1940, governor of Qld, 1895–1901.
Of course, the lamington being as quintessentially Australian as it is, the word can be shortened to lammo or lammie. And while we don’t want to start another debate (or do we?) we wonder which one is more common. We have wondered about the prevalence of another food-based colloquialism when we weighed in on the parmi, parmo, parma debate. These are both of a rare group that can take either the -o or -ie suffix.
And we would be remiss if we didn’t draw your attention to one of the wildest entries in our Australian Word Map, a couple of lamingtons short of a CWA meeting.
TIme for a snack break, we think.
Each week, we have a look at a slang word from Australian English. You can see other Aussie Word of the Week posts from the Macquarie Dictionary here.
