Are the Beijing Olympics likely to produce any new words?
Although the verb
to medal was first recorded in the United States in 1966, it became widespread in international English only with the swimming events at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.During the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Roy Slaven and H.G. Nelson, in their commentary on the gymnastics, gave international prominence to Australian terms such as
battered sav and
crazy date.
An interesting Olympic-inspired addition to the vocabulary of Australian English arose during the Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City in 2002. Steven Bradbury won a gold medal in the short track speed skating competition when all the other skaters fell. In the following months, the phrase to
do a Bradbury was widely used to describe someone who came from behind to be the unlikely winner of a contest.
In 2002, the phrase was used exclusively in sporting contexts:
South Rabbitohs and North Queensland Cowboys. Are suddenly firming as serious contenders to do a ‘Bradbury’ and win the NRL competition should everyone in front of them fall over under salary cap investigations. (Sydney Morning Herald)
Lowndes, 27, and the rest of the field would be forgiven for thinking their only hope of beating Holden’s Mark Skaife for the 2002 V8 crown would be to ‘do a Bradbury’. (Melbourne Age)
By 2004 there was some evidence that
do a Bradbury could be used outside a narrow sporting context, as in this example from the
Australian newspaper, where one firm wins a contract when the other competing firm falls by the wayside:
Kerry Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd has ‘done a Bradbury’... PBL has picked up the lease and management rights to the troubled 21,000-seat Superdome complex at Sydney’s Homebush for a song, after the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority was prevented from making a higher bid.
For a while it seemed that the phrase
do a Bradbury might not find a permanent place in Australian English, since its usage diminished greatly after the initial 2002 flourish. Even so, in 2008 we find that it is still being used, although still exclusively in sporting contexts. A recent example occurred with commentary on the possible winner of this year’s Brownlow Medal in AFL football:
Brownlow Medal fancy Adam Cooney says someone might ‘do a Bradbury’ this season and land the AFL’s most prized individual award because other contenders fall out of the race. Several AFL stars have already been ruled ineligible for the award after committing reportable offences. It prompted Cooney to suggest the Medal might end up going to the last man standing. (Hobart Mercury)
In April 2008 the
Gold Coast Bulletin produced a list of items that should be included among the ‘Great Australian Rights’. These legally-binding Australian rights included ‘the right to a pie at the footy’, ‘the right to a game of two-up on Anzac Day’, and at the end of the list of eighteen such rights, ‘the right to do a Bradbury and be proud’. Perhaps
do a Bradbury will prove to be a stayer in Australian English!
