tinnie

English

Alternative forms

• tinny

Etymology

From tin +‎ -ie.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

tinnie (plural tinnies)

1. (Australia, slang) A can of beer.
   • 2005, Jack Leonard, Bad Altitude‎^[1], page 170:

     Far better to send one of the girls out for a pizza and some tinnies, and then give her undivided attention when she returns.

   • 2008, Peter Dragicevich, Jolyon Attwooll, Sydney, Lonely Planet, page 154:

     In a city where alcohol was once the main currency (see p23), it′s little wonder that drinking is a big part of the social fabric – whether it′s knocking back some tinnies on the beach or meeting mates at the pub.

   • 2011, Calvin Wade, Forever Is Over‎^[2], page 378:

     I′m forty and Tyrene says if I keep supping the tinnies at this rate it won′t be long before I′m forty stone! I′m nineteen stone right now and if I had a dollar for every time Tyrene called me a “big, fat, lazy bastard”, I could charter a yacht and sail to the Whitsundays and we live in Perth!

2. (Australia, slang) A small open aluminium boat.
   • 2003, Christopher Cummings, The Mudskipper Cup: A North Queensland Story about Navy Cadets‎^[3], page 355:

     The bullies laughed and whistled and the tinnie turned once more, this time racing straight towards them from the port beam, bows tilted up, spray creaming out.

   • 2007, Caroline De Costa, Rookwood Island‎^[4], page 239:

     Part of the tinnie could be seen pushed up against the bank but otherwise it had all sunk.

   • 2009, Rebecca Pannell, “Seachange, Where Fish Fly”, in Susan Hosking, Rick Hosking, Rebecca Pannell, Nena Bierbaum, editors, Something Rich and Strange: Sea Changes, Beaches and the Littoral in the Antipodes, page 56:

     The miracles seem to have followed Kevin and Trevor who have remarkably travelled over fifty-eight nautical miles in little more than a tinnie, encountering all sorts of astounding natural phenomena such as enormous whales and strangely behaving sharks, bixarre star patterns and odd schools of fish.

3. (New Zealand, slang) Small package of drugs wrapped in foil.
   • 2022, Liam McIlvanney, The Heretic, page 25:

     Or swapped them for some tinnies, a bottle of El D?

Derived terms

• tinnie house

See also

• tinny

Anagrams

• intein, intine