hard yakka

English

Etymology

From hard +‎ yakka, from Yagara yaga (“work”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /hɑːd ˈjækə/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

hard yakka (uncountable)

1. (Australia, New Zealand, colloquial) hard work
   • 1988, Tom Cole, Hell West and Crooked‎^[1], page 247:

     The men who did all the hard yakka believed in a short cut – shoot the bastards; it was cheaper and easier.

   • 1991, Kim Beazley, Australian House of Representatives^[2]:

     somebody sits down and does the solid, hard yakka of talking his way through with the waterside workers and with the union movement generally

   • 1998, Keith B. Saunders, Myall Road‎^[3], page 37:

     At the age of sixteen, boy it was hard yakka, pouring fifty ton of red hot molten gun metal from the big firebrick lined oil furnace almost every day of the working week.