What it means
An all-time Aussie yelp for surprise, shock, or mild panic, the polite option when you can't drop the F-bomb in front of Nan. It's a minced-oath kind of thing, often linked to Christ, and it’s been in Aussie mouths for ages. Steve Irwin made it global, but locals still use it for spiders, bills, and anything that feels a bit cooked.
Usage examples
"Crikey, that servo wants ten bucks for a meat pie. Yeah nah, chuck us a snag from Bunnings instead, mate. Fair dinkum, daylight robbery out here."
"Crikey, there is a huntsman spider the size of a tea saucer in the corner of the bedroom in the Adelaide Hills, and the dog is hiding behind the door of the laundry room while the kookaburras outside laugh at the entire situation."
"Crikey, the electricity bill for the apartment in Surry Hills arrived this morning and it is twice what it was last quarter, the landlord blames the new air conditioner, but honestly the December heatwave did most of the damage by itself."
Where it comes from
Crikey is a minced oath of the late nineteenth century, born in British English as a euphemistic substitute for Christ that allowed churchgoing households of Victorian England to express astonishment without taking the Lord’s name in vain. The form drifted with English settlers to Australia, where the more relaxed national tone preserved crikey as everyday speech long after its British cousins faded into vintage usage. The wildlife television presenter Steve Irwin made the word a global brand from the late nineteen-nineties until his death in two thousand and six, and the Australian Tourism Commission has since used it in international advertising as the verbal stamp of the country.
Other ways to say it
Your vote counts
Is this real street talk or have we lost the plot? Cast your vote.