ten pound pom
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.13 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
noun
An assisted immigrant to Australia or New Zealand from Britain, from the decades following World War II.
Australian usage; New Zealand usage
Example Sentences
- "Under the slogan “Populate or Perish”, the government reintroduced assisted passages from Britain - the “ten-pound-poms” - also accepting substantial numbers of European refugees."
- "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, Timothy Darvill, “Jones, Rhys Maengwyn (1941-2001)", entry in Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology, 2nd Edition, unnumbered page, On graduating he became one of the last ‘ten-pound poms′ by migrating to Australia under a scheme where the individual paid £10 and the Australian government paid the rest of the fare for a one-way journey."
Etymology
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.