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The Australian noun "wanker"
Is "wanker" exclusively Australian in origin then, FS?
Cor blimey, stone the crows, guv. I'd never have credited it!
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In comic strips BONK is the sound of somebody getting hit in the head.
..though it can be THUNK, depending on the head's contents.
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.wonk tno'd ITEd, You may have just (with a resounding BONK) hit the nail on the head here! Could wonk have been produced in a word inversion game, with a particularly amusing sound as the result? The same may apply to bonk at that.. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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I believe both "to wank" and "wanker" to be of Australian origin but experience tells me that the use of these terms us not at all confined to those Down Under.
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Pooh-Bah
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Used pretty much as "git" (the UK noun rather than the US verb), with roughly the same degree of offensiveness. Maybe there's a dash of "twit" in there too.
Yes, shona, that is much the feeling I got from the contexts in which the term has been used in my hearing. A mixture, I thought of "twit" and "wanker," perhaps?
Incidentally, the term "wank" has been current over here (UK) for quite a long time - I certainly remember using it at school in the '50s - in its masturbatory sense, rather than "wanker" as an epithet; that usage appeared (so far as I'm concerned) in the '60s.
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experience tells me that the use of these terms us not at all confined to those Down Under
You ain't kidding!
What on earth did us Brits use before we knicked the Aussie phrase I wonder?!
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A mixture, I thought of "twit" and "wanker," perhaps?
That's very close Rhub - just a tad more "twit" perhaps.
I must get myself a slang dictionary (or find one online, better yet).
Any recommendations, anyone?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Hard-copy dictionaries of slang are as useless as a jock strap in a nunnery, in that they are out-of-date before the glue dries on the binding. The only sensible solution is an on-line slang dictionary but this area has not achieved sufficient respectability to entice a university department to undertake the task.
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>this area has not achieved sufficient respectability to entice a university department to undertake the task. oh? check this out: http://www.csupomona.edu/~jasanders/slang/project.html
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The website to which tsuwm refers is outstanding. I just spent half an hour rooting around in it and didn't discover all it has to offer. Thanks, chum!
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