Word.ws English Dictionary

ten pound pom

ten pound pom noun: an assisted immigrant to Australia or New Zealand from Britain, from the decades following World War II.

Noun (1)

ten pound pom (plural ten pound poms)

  1. (Australia, New Zealand) An assisted immigrant to Australia or New Zealand from Britain, from the decades following World War II.
    • Under the slogan “Populate or Perish”, the government reintroduced assisted passages from Britain - the “ten-pound-poms” - also accepting substantial numbers of European refugees.2004, Margo Daly, Alison Cowan, Adrian Proszenko, The Rough Guide to Sydney, page 323
    • She was able to overcome the hurdles of the Immigration Department because she had actually been born in Adelaide five years before, the child of ‘ten pound Poms’ who were now re-returning to Australia.2008, Eric Richards, Preface: Destination Australia: Migration to Australia Since 1901, page xiii

Noun (2) capitalized: ten pound Pom

ten pound Pom (plural ten pound Poms)

  1. Synonym of ten pound tourist.

Synonyms of ten pound pom

Forms of ten pound pom

pluralten pound poms
alternative formten pound Pom
pluralten pound Poms

Origin of ten pound pom

From ten + pound (“unit of currency”) + pom (“British person”); compare ten pound tourist. An allusion to the immigrant′s contribution (in sterling) paid for passage to Australia under an assisted immigration scheme, the remainder being paid by the Australian government. The scheme operated from 1946 to 1982; in 1973 the immigrant contribution was increased to £75.

Questions about ten pound pom

What does ten pound pom mean?
Ten pound pom means an assisted immigrant to Australia or New Zealand from Britain, from the decades following World War II.
What part of speech is ten pound pom?
Ten pound pom is a noun.
What is the plural of ten pound pom?
The plural of ten pound pom is ten pound poms.

Words near ten pound pom in the dictionary

  1. Ten Perfections
  2. ten piece
  3. ten points for Gryffindor
  4. ten points from Gryffindor
  5. ten points to Gryffindor
  6. ten pound pom
  7. ten pound poms
  8. ten pound tourist
  9. ten pound tourists
  10. ten sack
  11. ten sacks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ten pound pom (page history and authors); ten pound Pom (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: en-au-ten pound pom.ogg.

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