shiralee

shiralee noun: burden; load.

Noun

shiralee (plural shiralees)

(uncommon) Burden; load.
1. (Australia, colloquial, dated, uncommon) A type of swag that when rolled up resembles a leg of mutton, carried over the shoulder, usually with another load on the chest to balance it.
  - The bag of food like a shiralee across his shoulders, the water container stuffed into the looseness of his shirt, the compass, not required for awhile^([sic]) yet, in his side pocket, and the rifle balanced in his hand.2001, Filton Hebbard, Memories of Kalgoorlie: Tales from the Australian Outback, page 183
  - “Nothin′. A prickly gecko, mate. He dropped off your shiralee.”2006, Pip Wilson, Faces in the Street: Louisa and Henry Lawson and the Castlereagh Street Push, page 8

Synonyms of shiralee

matilda

Forms of shiralee

plural	shiralees

Origin of shiralee

First attested in print 1892. Later popularised through its use in the title of D'Arcy Niland′s 1955 novel The Shiralee (and two film adaptations, in 1957 and 1987)). Its meaning is no longer well known. Sometimes claimed to be from an (unidentified) Australian Aboriginal language. Alternatively, an anglicisation of Irish tiarálaí (“itinerant roustabout”) which came to be applied to his swag or matilda, and later (inspired by Niland's novel) to mean not only a physical burden but also a psychological one.

Questions about shiralee

What does shiralee mean?: Shiralee means burden; load.
What part of speech is shiralee?: Shiralee is a noun.
What is the plural of shiralee?: The plural of shiralee is shiralees.

Words near shiralee in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: shiralee (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: 2026-09-02

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