Word.ws English Dictionary

across the ditch

across the ditch prepositional phrase: on or to the other side of the Tasman Sea.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (Australia, New Zealand, informal) On or to the other side of the Tasman Sea.
    • The rate of arrivals fluctuates with the relative economic fortunes of each country, but since the late 1960s, faster growth, higher wages, greater job opportunities and a stronger dollar have been an economic magnet drawing New Zealanders across the ditch.2016, Peter Mares, Not Quite Australian: How Temporary Migration Is Changing the Nation, →ISBN

Origin of across the ditch

By analogy with across the pond, and the fact that the Tasman Sea is much smaller than the Atlantic Ocean.

Questions about across the ditch

What does across the ditch mean?
Across the ditch means on or to the other side of the Tasman Sea.
What part of speech is across the ditch?
Across the ditch is a prepositional phrase.

Words near across the ditch in the dictionary

  1. across
  2. across country
  3. across from
  4. across lots
  5. across the board
  6. across the ditch
  7. across the line
  8. across the pond
  9. across the way
  10. across variable
  11. across variables

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: across the ditch (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 across the ditch.ogg.

Cite this entry: “across the ditch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/across_the_ditch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.