Favorite Australian Slang: Chook

This is part of an ongoing series of posts on my favorite Aussie slang. Be sure to check back for updates, or subscribe to my RSS feed to get updates to your reader automatically.

Whether you have a couple of chooks outside, or you like a good chook sandwich, it still means the same thing: chicken. That’s right! The Aussie slang word for chicken is chook because a 2 syllable word is just too much to handle (hehe).

I was introduced to chook on my first week in Australia. I moved into a share house and one of the Aussie guys living there got a real kick out of calling me “Brooke my chook.” Haha, okay… ?

At first I thought he was just having fun with rhyming until he spelled it out for me that chook is a chicken down under. I guess it’s kind of like calling me a bird?

After that, I saw chook everywhere, even gigantic signs professing the sale of “chook feed” to the masses. A chicken sandwich was now a chook sandwich, or a chook burger mind you.

Face like a chook’s arse.

To say someone is sporting a miserable expression would be to say they have a “face like a chook’s arse.”

Chook raffle.

Meat raffles are a somewhat popular occurrence in Australia, and they generally take place in RSLs or other clubs. A chook raffle is then a raffle of chicken meat.

The term “chook raffle” is also used to describe an event that has gone to the birds, so to speak, by becoming random. The example Wikipedia uses is drawing a winner from a hat for an election.