Australian Word Map

cossie

noun (also plural) a swimming costume: *On hot nights before the nor'easter came you changed into your cossie and ran under the sprinkler. –CLIVE JAMES, 1980. Compare bathers, costume, swimmers, swimsuit, togs. Also, cozzie. [abbreviation of costume + -ie, diminutive suffix]
Contributor's comments: cosi - NSW short for swimming costume; very confusing from state to state. Victorians use the poofy `bathers' or even `swimmers'. Although I've lived in Qld for 18 yrs I'm not really sure what they call them (`togs'??). I've been using the pathetic `bathers' for 20 years because my wife is Victorian but I'm chucking that and reverting to my NSW roots and going back to cosi.

Contributor's comments: In Perth I grew up with the word "bathers" instead of "cossie". However I had South African "friends" who used the word swimming costume. We would also use "speedos" or "ballhuggers" or "racing bathers" for racing bathers and "boardies" for boardshorts.

Contributor's comments: In country Victoria, it was always togs, and yet as an adult in NSW, I always say swimmers. Togs seems inappropriately regional here in Sydney, and my partner, who is Hong Kong Chinese, finds the word togs quite amusing. As a male, however, the word cossie has always sounded like a girl's word.

Contributor's comments: When I moved from Sydney to Tasmania, I went into a swim shop and asked for some cossies. When they asked me what I meant, I said 'you know, costumes'. They sent me to a fancy dress and party costume shop!

Contributor's comments: I grew up in Victoria (the Latrobe Valley), and we called them togs 90% of the time, sometimes swimsuit (10%), and sometimes cossie (10%).

Contributor's comments: Cossie is definitely the NSW term. In Tassie, where I grew up they were our 'bathers'. Gee the water was freezing in Tassie compared to Sydney, though. Boys' speedoes in Sydney were always called 'sluggos' but I was very amused to see the recent episode of 'The Secret Life of Us' on the telly the other night all about cossie etiquette and a man's self-image. At one point the character referred to his sluggos as 'budgie-smugglers'. That still gets a laugh out of me.

Contributor's comments: I grew up in Victoria and we called bathers togs.

Contributor's comments: Bathers were togs in Victoria in my day and we use bathers in WA we can tell if you are from Sydney if you refer to cossies.

Contributor's comments: In Canberra we used the terms swimmers, cossie and bathers. My Dad was English and used the word 'trunks' for what he wore (which were more like shorts), but I am curious to know just how widespread the use of Speedos was, because that was also a term bandied about a lot in the 50s and 60s - just like Hoover (but we didn't wear vacuum cleaners when we swam!!!!!!!)

Contributor's comments: In SE Qld we say togs, bikinis for bikinis, boardies for boardshorts.

Contributor's comments: In SA the word bathers was the norm. Later, togs also became common. It was always a joke to hear NSW friends talking about cossies, which I presumed were swimming costumes, a term which seemed a bit antiquated. In the 1950s I understood a costume to be a woman's fitted suit. (My mother was a dress maker).

Contributor's comments: A student of mine here in London is actually called "Cosie" because he's a Kosovan refugee.

Contributor's comments: I only use the word 'cossie' in polite company or, as a child, in front of parents and teachers, etc. Amongst my peers, the word 'sluggos' has always been used. (Northern Beaches of Sydney).

Contributor's comments: I have never used this word. Brought up in Melbourne I always wore bathers but when I moved to Canberra people wore swimmers and now after 18 years here I've been converted and normally wear swimmers. Since I do aquarobics several times a week this is a fairly frequent use of swimmers.

Contributor's comments: In Western Sydney - male bikini or underpants style swimmers were called "Dick Stickers".

Contributor's comments: During 1956/7 I lived with two Adelaide girls in London. They constantly fell about laughing at my 'words for things' considering them 'old-fashioned'. 'Swimming Costume' amused them, but when I told them 'we' (Sydney people) usually said 'Cossie' they fell to the floor and rolled about laughing. Im very glad the term has not disappeared. (They said 'Bathers', which I thought a very 'stuffy' word, rather like their Adelaide accent, but never said so).

Contributor's comments: Growing up on King Island Tas, Cossie was used with almost as much frequency as togs, bathers or swimmers were hardly ever used except by those kids who came with their parents to work in the scheelite mine, the 'locals' prefered togs or cossie.

Contributor's comments: My comments relate to 'cossie'. I grew up in Brisbane and when our family went to the beach or the pool, we always wore togs. But I had a friend whose family had migrated from Dubbo in NSW. She insisted on calling her togs 'cossies'. I thought this was just disgusting and tried really hard to get her to change. Nowadays I guess she would be very uncool.

Contributor's comments: I grew up in Sydney and remember that the words "swimmers" or "cozzies". I think my family used "swimmers" and my mother grew up in various areas in south eastern Queensland and north eastern NSW. I think "cozzies" was more of a Sydney term.

Contributor's comments: I grew up in Sydney in the '50s. The things we wore to the beach were know by a variety of terms: cossy, swimmers, togs, bathers, swimming costume, swimming suit. They were all used interchangeably. 'Speedos' and 'racers' were the particular type used in competitive swimming, regardless of brand.

Contributor's comments: Cossies - as a daughter of a QLDer turned Sydney-sider and a Taswegian turned Victorian, I always used not only cossies, but bathers, swimmers, togs and trunks interchangeably when I grew up (in Canberra). But I never used called "little boys" (cocktail frankfurts) cheerios like our northern neighbours!

Contributor's comments: I grew up in the Inner Western suburb of Concord [in Sydney] and we used the term trunks as often as cossie.

Contributor's comments: "Trunks" or "swimming trunks" for male bathing atire was common in the UK but I have not heard the term in Australia except from ex-pats.

Contributor's comments: I grew up in Wollongong where the term cozzies was widely used. In my teenage years cozzies became less popular as a fashion item with the introduction of boardshorts. The Lifesavers who were not popular with the long haired surfie layabouts who referred to the cozzies worn by the Lifesavers as 'sluggos'.

Contributor's comments: An old NSW kids' riddle:- What's smaller than an ant's pants and a mossie's cossies? - a nit on a gnat's gnuts.

Contributor's comments: As an immigrant child of the 1950's I learned about cozzies when we went to the Georges River [Sydney] to paddle and swim. When 2-piece bathing suits and then 'horror-of-horrors' bikinis came on the scene we began calling them 'mozzies' cozzies' i.e. small enough to fit a mosquito (of which there were many where we lived). That term has endured in our neighbourhood. I have lived in Canada for several years and confuse the locals here, when they visit our home or cottage (term for week-end retreat) and I ask them if they've 'brought their mozzies' cozzies?" My last visit home to Oz in the summer of 2001 confirmed that 'mozzies cozzies' still exists.

Contributor's comments: [Brisbane informant] also 'meathangers', mostly (but not necessarily) restricted to school usage.

Contributor's comments: It was 'cossies' living just south of the NSW/QLD border, cousins from Vic called them bathers, and when my sisters moved over the border 'cossies' immediately became 'togs'. I've found that 'swimmers' work most places, and dick stickers was a fave term for paying out the boys in school :-)

Contributor's comments: From the Central Coast NSW. Holiday in QLD, asked shopkeeper where they sold cossies, she thought we meant stage costumes.

Contributor's comments: "Cossie" is NEVER used in WA.

Contributor's comments: This word was also heard in Melbourne on TV & radio, e.g. an ad with the song "Let's give a salute to the great Aussie Cossie", and on the comedy single "Australiana" by Austin Tayshus (sp?). But the term was never used in everyday speech.

Contributor's comments: Cossie was the name for swimming costumes when I was growing up in the Riverina, however, my brothers used the term togs for theirs.

Contributor's comments: On northern beaches 40 years ago, usually cossies. I seem to recall bathers and definitely speedos. My sisters wore Jantzen swimming costumes.

Contributor's comments: [from NT] I have heard this one, and also togs, but what about bathers? That's the one I know best and use myself.

Contributor's comments: My wife uses this (Melbourne) but I suspect she picked it up from her friends in Sydney.

Contributor's comments: I associate 'cossie' solely and entirely with Dame Edna who, I suspect, relished the sibilance and the rhyme with 'Aussie'. I'm a child of 1950's Melbourne and I wore 'bathers' to swim at South Melbourne beach.

Contributor's comments: In the 1950s on the northern beaches of Sydney, they were cossies, but ten years later they became sluggos and it really wasn't cool to use cossies any more.

Contributor's comments: 'Cossie' was the word I was introduced to in 1974 after I came to Sydney from London [we always used 'swimming costume' there]. As residents of the Northern Beaches, we also came across the words 'togs', 'boardies', 'speedos' and 'sluggos' as alternatives. It didn't seem to matter which was used and nobody laughed at, or commented about, what you used.