The insane Australian phrase you never knew existed

A Twitter thread about an Aussie phrase left many people confused. Photo / Getty Images

A New Zealander went viral on Twitter after pointing out the strange phrase Australians use to refer to playground slides - and most people say they've never heard it before.

Reid Parker, a New Zealander living in Australia, tweeted that he had just learnt that Australians call slides "slippery dips".

"I just found out that loads of Australians call slides 'slippery dips'," he posted.

"F*** you people are weird," he added.

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The tweet, posted on August 4, had more than 4,600 likes and hundreds of replies.

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"We sure do ... and if you wear your tracky dacks on the slippery dip you'll go heaps faster," someone replied.

"Slippery dips are a hoot, both descriptively and in reality. And no, weird is calling the rubber things you wear on your feet in summer 'jandals'. It isn't the least bit weird to call them 'thongs'," someone else said.

"Slides are what business people use in presentations," another person replied.

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It is not clear whether it is a phrase commonly used across all of Australia but people in both Queensland and New South Wales are reportedly familiar with the term.

One Twitter user pointed out that, in fact, "slides" and "slippery dips" are different things:

"A slide is a straight line. A Slippery Dip has bumps in it. A really big slide is called a Giant Slide, and a really big Slippery Dip is called a Big Dipper," the person wrote.

"People who call an actual slide a slippery dip have hung upside down from the monkey bars for too long."

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