Woop Woop
Australian term
Woop Woop (wop-wops in New Zealand) is an Australian term meaning a place that is a far distance from anything. Equivalent terms include "the middle of nowhere", "the boondocks" (Southern United States), "out in the boonies" (Western Canada), and "out in the sticks" or "the back of beyond" (UK). The term could be used pejoratively.
In a 2024 survey, 52% of newcomers to Australia reported knowing the term.
01Etymology
Woop woop was first used in the 1890s, along with other terms for imaginary place names like "Oodnagalahbi", to describe a mythical outback town.
The term is said to have been derived from the nickname given to men who carried fleeces in shearing sheds, after the sound they made as they ran around. Another theory indicates that the repetition is inspired by First Nations languages that often use reduplication for emphasis or plurality.
02Usage
Welcome to Woop Woop is a 1997 Australian comedy film about an American tourist who is kidnapped and brought to a cult named "Woop woop" located in the outback.
In 2021, the term was also used in a book about The Ghan train, titled The Train to Oodna-woop-woop: The story of The Ghan.
Whoop Whoop is the name of an Antarctic field camp on the ice plateau 40 kilometres (25 mi) east of Davis Station, used as a ski landing area (SLA) in late summer when the early summer sea ice SLAs adjacent to Davis are unusable.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Woop Woop”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Tree outback Australia.jpg by Matthijs van den Berg, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Australian population density 2016.png by Australian Bureau of Statistics, CC BY 4.0
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