Word.ws English Dictionary

New Zealandese

New Zealandese proper noun: the variety of English spoken in New Zealand.

Proper noun

New Zealandese

  1. (informal) The variety of English spoken in New Zealand.
    • The language we speak is New Zealandese, with its own idiom and pronunciation, and is just as distinctive as the language spoken by Americans, South Africans, Australians and Canadians.1990, Allan Bell, Janet Holmes, New Zealand Ways of Speaking English, page 34
    • He also won three bottles of champagne, or in New Zealandese, champers.2005, Wolfgang Klopfer, Formula 5000 in New Zealand & Australia: Race by Race, page 227

Origin of New Zealandese

From New Zealand + -ese.

Questions about New Zealandese

What does New Zealandese mean?
New Zealandese means the variety of English spoken in New Zealand.
What part of speech is New Zealandese?
New Zealandese is a proper noun.

Words near New Zealandese in the dictionary

  1. New Zealand wrens
  2. New Zealand yam
  3. New Zealand yams
  4. New Zealander
  5. New Zealanders
  6. New Zealandese
  7. New Zealandic
  8. New Zealandish
  9. New Zealandism
  10. New Zealandisms
  11. New Zealandize

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: New Zealandese (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:

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