acca

Michael Davie in "Going from A to Z forever" (an article on the recently released 2nd edn of the Oxford English Dictionary), The Age, Saturday Extra, 1 April 1989, writes of his visit to the dictionary section of Oxford University Press: Before I left, Weiner [one of the two editors of the OED] said he remembered how baffled he had been the first time he heard an Australian talk about the 'arvo'. Australians used the -o suffix a lot, he reflected. Arvo, smoko, garbo, journo. But not all -o words were Australian, said Simpson [the other of the two editors]: eg 'aggro' and 'cheapo'. I asked if they were familiar with the Oz usage 'acco', meaning 'academic'. They liked that. I hoped, after I left, they would enter it on one of their little slips and add it to their gigantic compost heap - a candidate for admission to the next edition. We trust that Edmund Weiner and John Simpson did not take a citation, since the Australian abbreviation of academic is not acco but acca (sometimes spelt acker). The abbreviation first appears in Meanjin (Melbourne, 1977), where Canberra historian Ken Inglis has an article titled 'Accas and Ockers: Australia's New Dictionaries'. The editor of Meanjin, Jim Davidson, adds a footnote: `acca (slightly derogatory) 1, noun An academic rather than an intellectual, particularly adept at manipulating trendiologies, usually with full scholarly apparatus. Hence 2, noun A particularly sterile piece of academic writing.' Other evidence: ♦ 1982 Sydney Morning Herald 3 September: N.S.W. University market day... Intended for the whole community, not just for accas (academic persons). 1984 Age Weekender (Melbourne) 2 March: Ackers from the university".