h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You missed the best one! "Sucked a kumara" - to break. ie. "My car just sucked a kumara"

I love this one, becacuse no one from anywhere else will have any idea what you're talking about.

=)

Oh, yeah, and "pear-shaped" - wrong. ie. "My car sucked a kumara, and then everything went pear-shaped".

Dunno if this is strictly a NZ saying, but it makes the above sentence almost unintelligible.

=)

How about "She'll be Jake"? Still a favourite of my dad's even after more than 20 years away from NZ. (Meaning it'll be ok! Sometimes suggested with unjustified bravado!)

About slang being only native to New Zealand. I am not sure that that should be a disqualification since some words do make it around the Commonwealth. Also some words may have been used in other places but are more prevailant in NZ than in these other places where they may be falling off or are used in slightly different ways.

For example, I don't know if your "stubbies" are the same as our stubbies - which are what the shorter chubbier Canadian beer bottle used to be called before we adopted the American style bottles.

When I was growing up, we used pissed for drunk and pissed off for angry but the people we drank with in Grand Forks (USA) used pissed up for drunk and pissed for angry. I guess Grand Forks won out because my 23 year old always said pissed for angry no matter how many times I corrected him.

Snarky is also a Canadian term, but though it is sarchastic it is considered more mouthy or arrogant than nasty - like in the phrase one uses when a teenager talks back or rolls their eyes - "Don't get snarky with me." Like in the English Debate a few years back when then PM Jean Cretien answered a question as to whether he is more arrogant now than he used to be. Snarky would be Gilles Duceppe's response: "He's telling the truth, he was always this arrogant." It was a bit snotty but far from nasty.

For the reason I came - researching Harry Potter surnames - some which we pretty much have to guess at. And a slang term is as good as any especially when one is talking about Elfrida Clagg or Ernie Prang.

Chances are you don't use "jambuster" for jelly filled donuts - which leads me to wonder what you call them. Or sh--disturber which ranges from snarky at one end to nasty and beligerant at the other end. For example, Jacques Derida would be considered a sh--disturber though he preferred the term desedimentalist.

I read in a New Zealand name book that Honey means "Noble one" do you know where that may have come from?

I'm not sure if we even have "Jelly Donuts" in NZ. Let's check the terminology - does Canada follow the US in that US Jello = NZ Jelly and US Jelly = NZ Jam? And does a donut have to be round?

There is a thing called a "jam wrap" which appeared in our Fish and Chip shops maybe 10 - 12 years ago, but it is vaguely cylindrical. Donut mix with a raspberry jam filling (the sort of syrupy fake jam you get baked into bread buns).
Fish and Chip shops are the primary source of donuts in NZ - they are usually pretty misshapen because they are supplied refrigerated or frozen and packed too tight, then deep-fried. Sugar + cinnamon coating is universal.
Otherwise, supermarket bakeries and hot bread shops mostly sell packs of mini-donuts which you warm in the oven before eating. And Christchurch has a good hot donut stand in the city mall.

Winchells did open a few American-style donut stores in NZ, but they only survived a couple of years. I never tried a jelly one, being distracted by all the more exotic varieties. I've just been told that Dunkin donuts has opened a couple of stores here, so maybe The Simpsons is slowly raising demand