Word.ws English Dictionary

reffo

reffo noun: a refugee who has settled in Australia.

Noun

reffo (plural reffos or reffoes)

  1. (Australia, derogatory, ethnic, slur) A refugee who has settled in Australia.
    • ‘It may be like this,’ he said ‘Australians are too bloody scared to be frankly unpleasant: Most of them hate the guts of reffos and other alien intruders, especially Jews and Dagos. But they like being liked and cannot resist giving help if it is needed, except, of course, if it′s the boss who...1980, Emery Barcs, Backyard of Mars: Memoirs of the “Reffo” Period in Australia, page 73
    • On the top floor behind the gabled windows, it was rumored, the reffo family slept. Mishka did not know, until he began attending the regional school in Mossman at the age of six, that he was a reffo. He was born in the Daintree. His mother before him was born in Daintree. But his grandparents had...2007, Janette Turner Hospital, Orpheus Lost, HarperCollins, published 2010, unnumbered page

Examples of reffo in a sentence

  • ‘It may be like this,’ he said ‘Australians are too bloody scared to be frankly unpleasant: Most of them hate the guts of reffos and other alien intruders, especially Jews and Dagos.1980, Emery Barcs, Backyard of Mars: Memoirs of the “Reffo” Period in Australia, page 73:
  • On the top floor behind the gabled windows, it was rumored, the reffo family slept.2007, Janette Turner Hospital, Orpheus Lost, HarperCollins, published 2010, unnumbered page:
  • ‘There are the reffoes,’ he said loudly. ‘Been here for over a week now and hardly been out at all.[…]’2010, Alison Booth, Stillwater Creek, published 2011, page 56:

Forms of reffo

pluralreffos
pluralreffoes

Origin of reffo

From refugee + -o (“diminutive suffix”).

Questions about reffo

What does reffo mean?
Reffo means a refugee who has settled in Australia.
How do you use reffo in a sentence?
‘It may be like this,’ he said ‘Australians are too bloody scared to be frankly unpleasant: Most of them hate the guts of reffos and other alien intruders, especially Jews and Dagos.
What part of speech is reffo?
Reffo is a noun.
What is the plural of reffo?
The plural of reffo is reffos.

Words near reffo in the dictionary

  1. reffing
  2. Reffitt
  3. Reffitts
  4. Reffner
  5. Reffners
  6. reffo
  7. reffoes
  8. reffos
  9. Reffs
  10. refi
  11. refibrillation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: reffo (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-reffo.ogg.

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