| Definitions | | wowser |
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noun
- A person with a strong moral views for temperance, abstinence, etc, and who promotes them generally or in particular seeks to impose them on other people. http://www.anu.edu.au/andc/ozwords/May_97/4._aussie_words.htm
- (obsolete) A lout or similar disruptive person.
Etymology: John Norton, an early wowser (temperance sense), claimed it to be an acronym for "We Only Want Social Evils Remedied", but that's likely a folk etymology.A story has it that gospellers in the streets of w:Clunes, Victoria, Clunes, Victoria in the 1870s were called rousers but one of the town councillors had a speech impediment and couldn't pronounce his "R"s, thus giving wowser. (Reference: Bill Wannan, Australian Folklore, Lansdowne Press, 1970, reprint 1979 ISBN 0-7018-1309-1, under "Wowser", page 568.)
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