Dunny
Dunny or dunny can is Australian and New Zealand slang for outhouses in the bush. It is also used informally to refer to other toilets.
Name
The form "dunnakin" appeared in 1790, where it is described as a cant term for "a necessary".[1] Its exact etymology is obscure,[2] but it seems to derive from some form of "danna", dialect or slang for feces,[3] added to the suffix "ken", a pejorative slang term for a house.[4] Other forms included "dunegan",[5] "dunikin", "dunniken", "dunnyken",[2] and "dunnekin". Its use spread to Australia and New Zealand, where it was contracted to "dunny".[n 1] and appeared in 1801 in the form "dunney";[7] in both of these Scottish uses, however, it appears as a diminutive form of the English word "dungeon" and refers to cellars.[9]</ref>
History
Traditionally an outhouse could be found in unsewered areas and consisted of little more than a seat placed over a can or cesspit. The latter variation can be referred to more specifically as a longdrop. The outhouse would be maintained at some distance from houses for reasons of smell and hygiene. The sheds themselves were generally made of either wood or corrugated iron, to facilitate the moving of the outhouse if required. In mining areas outhouses are sometimes placed over disused mine shafts. The person who appeared weekly to empty the pans beneath the seats was known as the "dunnyman".
By the middle of the twentieth century, outhouses had become much less common as modern plumbing diminished the need to keep toilets at a distance from the house. Nevertheless, even some large cities, such as Brisbane, had unsewered suburbs where residences required outhouses into the early 1970s, and they lingered on in Tasmania until the early 1980s.
In built up areas it was unhygienic to rely on cesspits and the usual arrangement was for waste to be collected in a can placed under the dunny. The cans would be collected, emptied, washed and replaced weekly by contractors hired by the local city or town council.
In modern times, many outhouses on old houses remained in use, but have been refitted with modern plumbing and flushing toilets. They are also used in areas too remote to justify the expense of pumping water and sewage piping to, but where there is a need for toilet facilities, such as at remote campsites or along walking tracks. Farmers and station owners sometimes also construct outhouses at remote but often used yards or sheds.
The Great Australian Dunny Race has become an icon during the Weerama Festival at Werribee.[10]
See also
Notes
- ↑ "Dunny" is first separately attested in John Buchan's 1922 novel Huntingtower[6]
References
- ↑ Potter, Humphry T. (1790), A New Dictionary of All the Cant and Flash Languages.
- 1 2 "dunny, n.²", Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1901.
- ↑ Hotten, James Camden (1859), A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words Used at the Present Day, Preceded by a History of Cant and Vulgar Language, with Glossaries of Two Secret Languages, by a London Antiquary.
- ↑ "ken, n.²", Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1901.
- ↑ Grose, Francis (1811), "Dunegan", A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.
- ↑ "That's a tough lot for ye... Used a' their days wi' sleepin' in coal-rees and dunnies and dodgin' the polis."<ref>Buchan, John (1922), Huntingtower, Ch. vii.
- ↑ "If we wished to secure anything he had found a dunney under his house as dry as this room."[8]
- ↑ Cited in the June 1959 Three Banks Review.
- ↑ "Dunny, n.", Scottish National Dictionary, Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 2005.
- ↑ The Great Australian Dunny Race Retrieved on 14 March 2009