While i wait for my nut labels to print for work, thought i would quickly see what is happening here :) Your very right Peter..... Oops, Bugger that was me...... Oops is another one & means i made a little mistake...... To any of you left wondering.... Bugger is regularly used in conversation in Australia, but certainly depends on the sentence as to what it means..... The old oxford dictionary gives it a terrible meaning, which no body has used for hundreds of years so it should be removed, & not to be mentioned here by any means please.... Bugger is recognised in many Australian dictionaries or slang dictionaries, we don't normally use abbreviations like "Afaik " in Australia but our whole language base seems to include a lot of slang words in conversation, so many in fact that most people would no longer know which ones are slang & which ones are true dictionary meanings, many are being added to dictionaries, it makes it confusing for outsiders for sure ! In normal conversations in Australia bugger is used all the time & i wonder when the meaning changed, & why ? It is usually used with the terminology, ( O my goodness i buggered that up ! ) "The understood meaning for all Australians is - " I made a silly mistake " (What a bugger) can be used like "i wish that had not happened" (Don't bugger it up ) "don't break that thing" (You bugger) i'm not sure i can get this one but its used a lot & finally (Bugger off) "Go away" Quite funny really no wonder people are confused by us Australians.... I sometimes wonder if our convict roots played a roll in language changes as the English deported large numbers of uneducated men & women, most only guilty of steeling a loaf of bread through forced starvation, or similar minor offences......Many of them couldn't even spell their names & that is why so many names changed here on arrival to the convict colonies..... Steven Esk Queensland Australia On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 3:36 AM, Peter Taggart <petersirises@gmail.com>wrote: > I try to avoid abbreviations, swearing, compressions and figures of > speech. > While perfectly understandable to me, I hate to think what a translation > into Hungarian or Polish of the words "bugger" or "doofuses" might be.