nuffie

This is not a common colloquialism, restricted as it seems to be these days to the context of sport, in particular cricket and football (all codes), where it means an over-the-top enthusiast for the game.  It seem to be particularly strong in Victoria. Macquarie gives nuffie in this sense as definition 2 with the first definition being ‘a stupid person’ but there is no explanation of how this has come about.

I think that nuffie and nuff-nuff are both playing on nuffin which the Oxford English Dictionary gives as colloquial and regional variants of nothing. We did this in Australia as well, where it is particularly documented as children’s speech.  ‘What have you got there, Johnny?’ ‘Nuffin’. ‘What are you up to?’ ‘Nuffin.’

So where did the idea of the stupid person come from?  I did find in TROVE one intriguing dialogue in a satirical column called The Moving Picture Show published in the Sydney Sun in 1933. Miss Topsy Turvy is bragging about the new name she had for the Stevenses.  She would call them yappers because she, of course,  would never use bad language. 

‘No, you wouldn’t!’ said Willie. ‘Not even if I was to call you a “No Nuffin.”’ ‘Wot!’ screamed Topsy. ‘No naggin’ Noodle I’ said Willie.  Topsy hurled the bottle and then flopped down in screaming hysterics.

In this exchange no-nuffin produced a fierce reaction.  I think it comes from the idea that someone is described as having nothing there, being an idiot.  Perhaps it is a version of know-nothing. This gives us the nuffin as the stupid person which becomes more affectionately the nuffie. And the link to the enthusiast is perhaps by way of the expression to be stupid about something meaning ‘to be ridiculously infatuated with it’.