Word.ws English Dictionary

boong

/bʊŋ/

boong noun: an Australian Aboriginal person.

Noun

boong (plural boongs)

  1. (Australia, ethnic, offensive, slang, slur) An Australian Aboriginal person.
    • I heard Bruce tell one of the drinkers he'd bought a place in Queensland where you could ‘still call a Boong a Boong’.1988, Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines, page 92
    • ‘[…]I quit the feds because I didn't want to be a showpiece boong cop.’2010, Peter Temple, The Broken Shore, page 82
  2. (Australia, dated, slang) A native of New Guinea or Malaysia.
    • A couple of boongs came down and carried me up to the hut where our R.A.P. corporal was.1943, Australian Army, “Timor Souvenir”, in Khaki and Green: With the Australian Army at Home and Overseas, page 119
    • During the War the soldiers generally referred to Papua New Guineans as “Boongs,” a name also given to black Americans. It is not a nice word, but is fair to say that the Aussies held the boongs in quite some affection during the War.1998, August Ibrum K. Kituai, My Gun, My Brother: The World of the Papua New Guinea Colonial Police, 1920-1960, page 282

Synonyms of boong

Forms of boong

pluralboongs
alternative formbung
alternative formbong

Origin of boong

Suggested sources are * Malay bung (“brother”), * Indonesian dialectal bung (“brother”) * A New Guinea native language * An Aboriginal Australian language. Previously the word Binghi was used widely in similar fashion to the present-day use of the term Negro for peoples of African ancestry; see titles from this booklist and also writings of Xavier Herbert (e.g. in Capricornia), for example.

Words that rhyme with boong

5 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about boong

What does boong mean?
Boong means an Australian Aboriginal person.
What part of speech is boong?
Boong is a noun.
How do you pronounce boong?
Boong is pronounced /bʊŋ/.
What is the plural of boong?
The plural of boong is boongs.

Words near boong in the dictionary

  1. boonest
  2. Booneville
  3. booney hat
  4. boonfellow
  5. boonfellows
  6. boong
  7. boonga
  8. boongaries
  9. boongary
  10. boongas
  11. boongs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: boong (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-boong.wav.

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