Australian Word Map

bathers

swimming clothes: Put on your bathers; we're going for a swim. Compare cossie, costume, swimmers, swimsuit, togs.
Contributor's comments: This is used in South Australia.

Contributor's comments: In South Australia, we have always referred to swimming attire as "bathers" or, sometimes in the case for girls, "swim-suit".

Contributor's comments: This is also used in WA.

Contributor's comments: Bathers has always been used in Perth where I was born and lived until 8 years ago.

Contributor's comments: Growing up and living in Perth, we have always used the term 'bathers' when swimming. Sometimes the term 'bathing suit' is used.

Contributor's comments: A true West Aussie only uses the word 'bathers' for swimming costumes, etc. If they use any other words for bathers such as 'sluggos' it is only for comic or ironic effect.


Contributor's comments: Also used in Tasmania.

Contributor's comments: BATHERS - definitely the dominant term in Vic.

Contributor's comments: Definitely used in Mildura, Victoria, where I grew up!

Contributor's comments: I always put on my swimmers or Cossies to go to the beach (Sydney) but my wife from Melbourne always calls them Bathers - It might be something to do with the fact they don't have surf in Melbourne so it is like a bath.

Contributor's comments: I've always lived in Melbourne, Victoria and we have always used the word bathers to refer to a swim suit.

Contributor's comments: In NSW we mainly use the word swimmers. I thought bathers was an old fashioned word!

Contributor's comments: Synonymous to togs, swimmers, trunks, cossie (I forgot to take my bathers to the pool so I skinny dipped). This was in use in Broken Hill. However also used the word togs. Dad from Sydney, Mum from Melbourne, so my current postcode [4061, Brisbane] is probably irrelevant except for the fact that no-one here knows what I mean when I say bathers, or for that matter yeast bun or fritz.

Contributor's comments: Term "bathers" also in use in Brisbane.

Contributor's comments: My parents used this term - Mum from Tasmania, Dad from Sydney - but my friends in Sydney always thought it was old-fashioned and didn't understand it.

Contributor's comments: We have moved up to Sydney from Victoria, where for all my own childhood, and my children's experience, bathers was the term for swimming apparel. At school in Sydney, they are treated like foreigners when they say bathers, as the term seems to be 'swimming costume", which we had never used in Vic.

Contributor's comments: I grew up in NSW (Sydney) with Victorian parents and used this term, but the locals tended to use swimmers or cossies.

Contributor's comments: Used in Sydney.

Contributor's comments: Definitely used in Tasmania!

Contributor's comments: People in the ACT of my vintage (b. 1944) use various words for swimming attire, e.g. "bathers", "cossie", "Speedos" (was mostly men, but now covers competitive swimmers), "swim-suit" and when I was little the more formal "swimming costume" or "costume" (no doubt the word from which "cossies" is derived).







Contributor's comments: bathers is a term used by 80% of Northern Territorians 15% use swimmers and 5% use any other weird terms.

Contributor's comments: I looked under cossie and found no reference to bathers, the most common term in Western Australia.

Contributor's comments: Disagree with "bathers" being used in Sydney. If it ever is, it's due to that person having an interstate connection eg. parent.

Contributor's comments: Known as togs on King Island in the 60s early 70s.

Contributor's comments: Also used in UK.

Contributor's comments: Have almost always used "bathers", occasionally "trunks" - brought up in Melbourne.

Contributor's comments: Bathers as in "bathing costume" is the Victorian rival to the NSW "Cossie".

Contributor's comments: I was raised in Brisbane and only ever spoke of "togs" for swimming. Only people who came from other States used "bathers" or "swimmers". I now live in Melbourne and have learned to use "bathers".

Contributor's comments: When I was a child on the beaches around Portsea and Sorrento in Port Phillip Bay we always called swimming costumes 'bathers'.

Contributor's comments: My grandparents and parents are all from Melbourne. My parents moved to Townsville. I remember using the term bathers and/or togs and friends not knowing what I was talking about.

Contributor's comments: Disagree with "bathers" being a Brisbane regionalism. Until recently would only have been used by a person from or with connections outside Queensland. Queensland kids would have laughed, we all called them "togs".

Contributor's comments: Is this just used in Western Australia?

Contributor's comments: Definitely only togs in Brisbane. I never heard any other word until I met someone from Sydney who called it a cossie.

Contributor's comments: I grew up in Brisbane and always called them swimmers, but I had NSW parents, so that is probably why I don't call them togs, like many Queenslanders do.

Contributor's comments: I'm originally from Melbourne and I always put on my bathers before swimming (as did my Melbourne friends) while my Sydney born partner always puts on his swimmers.

Contributor's comments: Again I can't imagine why we have so many words for one single item of clothing. Heard of these words in 1978

Contributor's comments: Having lived in in NSW, then SA for my school life and now back in NSW as an adult, 'bathers' rule in SA and 'swimmers' in NSW, bathers has an older sedate Victorian notion of aquatic activity - swimming is an active pursuit - you thus wear 'swimmers', boardshorts, dick-dacks or lolly bags.

Contributor's comments: pronounced bay-thers.

Contributor's comments: Born and raised in Melbourne, in the '50s, the usual word was 'togs', but if you were 'bunging on side' a bit, you might say 'bathers'. When I went into the airforce, the girls from the different states called many different things by different names.

Contributor's comments: I didn't see 'bathers' in with togs, cossie etc. Surely 'bathers' is the dominant term - or is it just me?

Contributor's comments: I grew up in Geelong, and we used bathers, though the term togs were also used.

Contributor's comments: The ONLY word for what you wear when you go swimming in SA! Recent additions are speedos for competition or boardies for the beach. However when wearing your bathers what you do is never called bathing, swimming pools are never called swimming baths - very old fashioned!

Contributor's comments: in WA, they're "bathers". First time I was in the eastern states, someone told me to bring my "togs" with me. I was confused, thinking they were some type of shoes (clogs)!

Contributor's comments: This is the equivalent for 'togs' or 'cozzie' or 'swimmers' in Adelaide.

Contributor's comments: In Hobart we always wore bathers to go swimming. Still do.

Contributor's comments: Bathers in WA for bathing costume.

Contributor's comments: [Melbourne informant] What you wear to go swimming in: "Chuck on ya bathers, and lets hit the beach."

Contributor's comments: Melbourne, Victoria 40s - 50s: bathers = swimming costume = cozzies, togs: "Will you take your bathers with you on the bush walk?"

Contributor's comments: [Perth informant] What those in the east call cossie/swimmers/togs: "When I go to the beach for a swim I wear my bathers."

Contributor's comments: swimsuit: "Don't forget your bathers!" (used in Perth)

Contributor's comments: [Melbourne informant] Same as togs, swimmers: "I am wearing my bathers to go to the beach."

Contributor's comments: I grew up literally living at a Brisbane suburban public pool in the 1960s and 70s. I never heard anyone use the term 'bathers' unless they came from interstate. We always said 'togs'. We definitely did not call them 'cossies' or 'swimmers, terms I learnt when I moved to Sydney in the 1980s. When I lived in Melbourne a decade later, I heard 'bathers' and 'togs'. Now back in Sydney living at the beach I still say 'togs' and occasionally 'swimmers'. As for Speedos, that's what we called them in Brisbane at least. Although the male version (even now in Sydney) was 'sluggos'.

Contributor's comments: Bathers were what we wore in Victoria, however my father would refer to togs and he had lived in Qld. Also have heard togs used in reference to sports gear in general, as for kit.

Contributor's comments: [Wimmera and Mallee informant] Have heard it used, but mostly called togs, then later we boys would use 'footy nicks'.

Contributor's comments: I grew up in Sydney and "bathers" was the main word used by my family. My father also used "togs". Both parents were from Sydney but father had spent a few years in Melbourne and on the NSW-QLD border.

Contributor's comments: Definitely used in Tasmania - when I met my future husband, a Sydneysider, he fell about laughing at the term, thinking it sounded like something from the previous century. He used 'swimmers' - or occasionally 'cossies' which I thought sounded quainter than 'bathers'.

Contributor's comments: I first heard a swim suit called "bithers" (bathers) by some people from Frankston VIC when I was working in Sri Lanka around 1970. Later, I emigrated to Sydney and I do not remember hearing it again.