Whilst I was living in the United Kingdom, I was referred to, by English people, as an antipodean. This word is used to describe anybody from Australia or New Zealand. I thought nothing of this for years and had always just assumed that it was a name given to us for some arbitrary reason. Today however I was looking at my phone, at my word of the day application, and the word today was antipode. Antipode means a direct or exact opposite. My first thought upon learning this, was that antipodean was used to describe Australians because when people were first using the term, all Australians were convicts from England, and so the English saw that we were their exact opposites, as they were law abiding, and we were law breakers. If this was the case then it seemed quite insulting that they still used the term to label all Australians in England. It seemed to be implying that they still saw themselves as better than us, even though we are now a nation in our own right, not simply a colony of convicts.
After I jumped to my initial conclusions, I decided to click and see the full definition. This further explained that antipodes was the plural of antipode and actually had a different meaning. Antipodes means places diametrically opposite to each other on the globe and can also mean the people that dwell at this diametrically opposite place. Antipodean is the related form of this plural version of antipode. This means that most likely the reasons that English people refer to Aussies and Kiwis as antipodeans, is probably just because we are almost diametrically opposite their country on the globe, and they are most likely not looking down upon us each time they use the term. So today, aside from learning the meaning of antipode, I also learnt that sometimes more investigation is required before you jump to conclusions. Although jumping to conclusions can often be more fun!
The definition of antipode and many others is on Dictionary.com.
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