Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Australia, New Zealand A scam or fraud, especially involving the misappropriation of public money or resources.
  • verb Australia, New Zealand, transitive To cheat or defraud.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Probably a back-formation from rorty ("boisterous or rowdy, saucy, dissipated, or risqué"). Originally slang but now in common usage.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Usage by bilby on red or green.

    June 15, 2011

  • It's beloved of newspaper headlines because it's so compact and abrupt.

    TAX CLAIMS RORT.

    BANK RORT PROBE.

    That kind of thing.

    June 15, 2011

  • I can't remember the last time I encountered an Australianism that was totally new to me, like this. I quite often run into regional American slang with which I'm unfamiliar, and it's always exciting when I do, but as a Brit I always identified more closely with Australians (and hence their lingo) than with Americans.

    Would love to know the etymology of rort. I bet it's some weird Gaelic thing; that would explain why it's so strange to me.

    June 15, 2011

  • Well, I've reinstalled my dickey OED and it's not much help. Apparently it's a back-formation from rorty, adj. (also raughty) "of dubious propriety" (among other senses) which is of course "of obscure origin" (OED-speak for "sorry we haven't a clue").

    The only usages it gives of the verb form are as gerunds - rorting used as a noun.

    June 15, 2011

  • Funnily enough I wasn't aware of how Australian (and NZ, baaaa!) it was or I might have been a bit more self-conscious about bandying it around. Perhaps what I'm confessing is that it's not one of those words that Australians recognise as being Australian, like sheila.

    June 15, 2011

  • It's not one of those Aussie-cliché words which everyone knows are Australian. But that only goes to strengthen its status as a true Australianism (and New Zealandism, baaaa!)

    June 15, 2011

  • According to NPR's Says You: a rowdy party or celebration.

    May 19, 2012

  • You can't rort the rort.

    May 11, 2022