Pom/Pommie

Origin of: Pom/Pommie

Pom/Pommie

Australian and New Zealand slang for the British and British immigrants in particular. The term dates from around the turn of the 19th/20th century and the origin is still obscure. The OED maintains that it is an abbreviation of pomegranate, a deliberate jocular miss-pronunciation of immigrant, while other sources say that British immigrants resemble a pom or pomegranate because of their blotchy, sunburnt skin soon after their arrival, but there is no hard etymological evidence for either of these theories. Attempts to put forward acronyms like POME, prisoner of Mother England, or POM, product of Mother England are spurious.