bunyip
Americannoun
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a mythical creature of Aboriginal legend said to inhabit water and watercourses.
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an impostor.
adjective
noun
Etymology
Origin of bunyip
First recorded in 1840–50; from Wergaia (an Australian Aboriginal language of the Wimmera area, Victoria) banib
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The mysterious bunyip, the legendary beastie that lives at the bottom of the placid Australian billabong, is less strange to Australians than Herbert Vere Evatt.
From Time Magazine Archive
If it was a bunyip beating his gin, she’d holloa out like hooray, and squeak the leaves off the trees.”
From Bunyip Land A Story of Adventure in New Guinea by Browne, Gordon
They went as swiftly as a motor-car disappears from view—I believe they reckoned they'd seen the bunyip.
From A Little Bush Maid by Bruce, Mary Grant
“Did you hear the bunyip any more, Jimmy?”
From Bunyip Land A Story of Adventure in New Guinea by Browne, Gordon
“Big bunyip—no brown fellow—big black bunyip debble, debble!”
From Bunyip Land A Story of Adventure in New Guinea by Browne, Gordon
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
