durry

Unknown. Possibly (putative obsolete brand of roll-your-own tobacco) + -y (“diminutive suffix”).

David Bradley, Australian Journal of Linguistics (1989) suggests that it may be derived from a widely used brand of loose tobacco used for roll-your-owns, Bull Durham, clipped and resuffixed with the most productive suffix for forming new colloquial words in Australian English.

Suggested that it was a term brought back from ANZAC forces as a Dhurrie Rug and a cigarette are both rolled.

• durrie

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

durry (plural durries)

1. (Australia, New Zealand, colloquial) A cigarette, especially a roll-your-own.
   • 2003, C. C. Saint-Clair, Far from Maddy‎, page 224:

     “Fire-head lady, you got a smoke?” asks the younger of the two men. “You got a durry. Cigarette.”

   • 2004, Jay Verney, Percussion‎, page 118:

     He pulled a tobacco pouch out of his pocket with a plastic bag containing what had to be a mind-altering substance. “You′re welcome to join me in a durry,” he said, rolling himself a cigarette.

   • 2007, Kevin Hallewell, Woop Woop‎, page 151:

     He thought for a moment as he deftly rolled the paper and tobacco into a durry, licked the edge and stuck it down.

   • 2015, Charlotte Wood, The Natural Way of Things, Allen & Unwin, published 2018, page 3:

     This was the first thing Yolanda knew in the dark morning. (That and where's my durries?)

• See Thesaurus:cigarette

Alternative forms.

durry

1. Alternative form of dhurrie

• Drury, drury