This week’s common Aussie slang expression is another one that starts with the word fair. As I’ve mentioned previously, there is a strong sense of fairness in Australian society which is probably why so many of the expressions we use refer to it in some way.

Fair suck of the sauce bottle is a variation of fair go which I wrote a post about a fortnight ago. The Australian National University explains that this phrase “expresses a keen sense of injustice“, so it’s used when a person believes they are being treated very unfairly.

“Hey, fair suck of the sauce bottle! There’s no need to be so rude, I was only wanting to ask you a question.”

Sauce bottle is sometimes replaced with saveloy or, its shortened form, sav. Who knows how this expression started, but I think the alliteration with suck and sauce bottle/saveloy probably helped to make it more memorable. There is another expression, fair crack of the whip, that has the same meaning as fair suck of the sauce bottle.

So, if you’re here in Australia and there’s a situation in which you feel you have been treated very unfairly, you should try using fair suck of the sauce bottle and see what kind of reaction you get.

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Glossary

fairness – the quality of treating people equally or in a way that is right or reasonable

fortnight – a period of two weeks

evident – easily seen or understood

keen – extreme or very strong

a sense of injustice – a general feeling or understanding that people are not being treated equally or fairly

sauce bottle – a bottle of alcoholic liquor

saveloy/sav – a type of spicy smoked sausage made with pork (= meat from a pig)

alliteration – the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of words that are close together