12.4 Australian word usage (misc)
Description
This article is from the soc.culture.australian FAQ, by Stephen Wales with numerous contributions by others.
12.4 Australian word usage (misc)
* Units of measure
"kilo" - always refers to a weight (ie kilograms)
eg. "I've put on half a kilo", "one kilo of chicken breasts please"
"k" - always refers to distance or speed (ie kilometres or km/hour)
eg. "It's 250 k's to Lithgow from here", "I got busted doing 140 k's
on the freeway"
"mil" - refers to liquid volume (ie millilitres)
eg. "I'll have the 500 mil bottle please"
The terms grams, metres, litres and degrees are used as is. As yet
there is no conversational abbreviation for centimetres, which may
explain why description of people's heights in feet and inches still
persists somewhat in the street, although not in newspapers or on TV,
where the full word is used.
* Australasia and Oceania [BJ]
Australiasia=Oz+NZ.
Oceania=Oz+NZ+Fiji+all those South Pacific Islands...
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