The most common explanation is that it's a reference to Australia's past as a convict colony. “Pom” is supposedly a bastardised acronym, meaning “prisoner of Mother England” or “prisoner of Her Majesty”.
pom (plural poms) (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, mildly derogatory slang) An Englishman; a Briton; a person of British descent.
pom. A British person, especially one from England. (Originally applied to an immigrant from the British Isles.) The word pom has its origin in wordplay. An early, derisory term for an immigrant in Australia was the rhyming slang jimmygrant (sometimes written as Jimmy Grant), recorded in 1844.
It comes from Sydney Rhyming Slang. 'Pom' is short for 'pomegranate', which rhymes with 'immigrant'. It dates from a time when the majority of immigrants to Australia were from Britain, with the result that the word 'immigrant' was synonymous with 'British' in people's minds.
In a joking way people would play with immigrant from around 1850 or so, turning it into a proper name (Jimmy Grant), to give the strange immigrants a pseudo-personality. Equally playfully, a Jimmy Grant morphed around 1912 into pomegranate and immediately into pom, which it has stuck as till today.
(pi oʊ ɛm) or prescription only medicine. abbreviation. (Pharmaceutical: Administration) The abbreviation POM on the label of a medicine tells you that the medicine is only available if a doctor prescribes it. POMs are only available with a prescription issued by a doctor.
Ozzie. Meaning: (Noun) An alternative way to spell and pronounce Aussie, also short for Australian.
The term Pom first popped up in around 1913, at which point, according to a Sydney Sun clipping, it eclipsed 'new chum' as the popular way to refer to Brits down under. So there you have it.
a British person, especially one who is a recent immigrant.
The Pomeranian (often known as a Pom) is a breed of dog of the Spitz type that is named for the Pomerania region in north-west Poland and north-east Germany in Central Europe.
The terms pommy, pommie, and pom used in Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand usually denote a British person. Newspapers in Australia were using the term by 1912.
' As a nation the Australians rarely use polysyllables when one will do and so pom became the pejorative name for a newly-arrived British immigrant. The Anzac Book of 1916 supported this theory, attributing 'Pom' as an abbreviation of pomegranate.
In Australia, the term "flogger" is sometimes used rather than "pom-pom".
The Winjin' Pom (the name is a pun on the "whinging pom", an Aussie expression used to refer to a person of British origin who constantly complains about things he has to face) caravan is famous not only for talking but also for flying, something which occurs several episodes in after a hijack by The Crows.
The Ten Pound Poms Scheme was introduced in 1945 to migrate Britons to Australia and New Zealand. Its purpose was to boost the economy after the Second World War. In 1945 the Ten Pound Poms Scheme enabled British citizens to migrate to Australia for the grand total of £10, with children travelling free of charge.
From 1945 to 1972, over a million United Kingdom migrants travelled to their new Australian homeland on board ships of the P&O and Orient Line. Known as the Ten Pound Poms, this mass exodus was a scheme devised by the Australian and British Governments in order to help populate Australia.
The UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (UK PoMS) aims to establish how insect pollinator populations are changing across the UK.
/ˈpɑːm.pɑːm/ uk. /ˈpɒm.pɒm/ a small ball of yarn or other material used as a decoration, especially on the top of a hat: I had a white sweater and a maroon hat with a white pompom.
Some British people, we should add, say they're proud to be called a Pom. Dictionaries, however, note that the word is "usually disparaging" and "could cause offence".
Seppo is most often used by Australians and New Zealanders. It's mostly used to contemptuously refer to Americans, those bloody seppos. It can be a serious or humorous insult.
Why do Australians say capsicum? Australia, New Zealand, India and Pakistan all call the vegetable capsicum in reference to its scientific name, capsicum annum.
“G'day, mate!” (mostly used by men though, not so often by women.)
People from Australia call their homeland “Oz;” a phonetic abbreviation of the country's name, which also harkens to the magical land from L. Frank Baum's fantasy tale.
All poms are in the chrysanthemum family, but not all mums are called poms. Strawberries, raspberries and blackberries aren't technically berries, yet we widely consider them to be berries and they're pretty much the only things we call berries constantly.
Bum nut's origin does not need much explanation—it's a humorous re-imagining of an egg as a roundish (nutlike) product of a hen's rear end. Australians use a couple of other colloquial words for a hen's egg. The Australian English word googie or goog is an informal term that dates from the 1880s.