dodgy

I noticed that in amongst all the more formal descriptions of Scott Morrison, after it was discovered that he had been acquiring ministries in secret, was the term dodgy.  Yes, he was arrogant and power-hungry and displayed ‘Trumpian disregard for the democratic system Morrison had been entrusted to oversee’ [Paul Gregoire]. But Jason Clare summed up Morrison’s activities as ‘crazy and dodgy’. The AFR said: ‘It’s the secrecy that makes Morrison look dodgy’.

I thought it was good that an Aussie word like dodgy was still part of the conversation so I checked it in the Australian National Dictionary — and there it wasn’t.  This was because it was considered to be a word that was and is part of British English, but it seemed to me that there was a difference between how dodgy was used in that variety of English and how it operated in Australian English.

The OED spends more time and space on dodge that it does on dodgy, a dodge being literally a movement made to avoid someone or something, and then metaphorically a bit of devious trickery designed to elude or cheat someone.  A dodge is a lurk or a wheeze. We also use dodge in this way. The trick can be manipulative and exploitative, but it can also be benign, the equivalent of today’s hack as in the following:

He did look after her with sedulous care. He had natty bush dodges for minimising the discomfort of the hot dusty train journey.

Rosa Praed Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land.

On the doubtful side we have old favourites like tax dodges and electioneering dodges.

It follows then that dodgy applies to someone who is addicted to dodges, who is evasive and devious and full of cunning schemes to outwit others.  A dodgy salesman is out to cheat you.

Something that is dodgy is difficult to handle or navigate, unreliable or even slightly dangerous.  A house might have dodgy plumbing. Driving on a bad road at night could be dodgy. An animal with an unreliable temperament could be described as dodgy.  Security could be dodgy.

We also have these meanings for the word but where is the Aussie sense of dodgy with synonyms of shady, suss, dishonest and possibly illegal, which is what Jason Clare meant with reference to Morrison.

These are all qualities exemplified by The Dodgy Brothers, an Australian comedy act.  Thanks to the popularity of this segment of Australia, You’re Standing In It (1983), Dodgy Brothers can now be applied to any unreliable or possibly illegal company, operation or activity.  That’s Dodgy Brothers!

I feel, as with a number of words acquired from British English, that we have made so much more of this one that the Brits have that we are entitled to acknowledge it as our own.