Bondi/Waverley has many claims to fame, but one aspect of its history is, perhaps, accorded less than its due. It was responsible for others coming into the language of one of Australia's most famous words: "wowser".

For those unfortunately not intimate with this estimable and useful term, it might be explained that it means (according to the Little Macquarie Dictionary) "a prudish teetotaller; killjoy"

But it means much more than that. In common Australian parlance a wowser is all that a dinki-di Aussie should not be; it is almost synonymous with "unAustralian".

A wowser is not only against beer, bad language and sex, but everything that makes life in Australia worth living. And the wowser not only eschews such simple pleasures him or herself, but wants to deprive everyone else, too.

The word so fascinated visiting English writer D.H. Lawrence that he later wrote of poem entitled "The Little Wowser".

The term comes from around 1900 and was invented by Sydney newspaper owner, John Norton, who started a scandal-sheet called The Truth (a misnomer if ever there was one).

He later explained how the word came into being: "I invented the word myself. I was the first man publicly to use the word. I first gave it public utterance in the City Council, when I applied it to Alderman Waterhouse, whom I referred to as the white, woolly, weary, watery, word-wasting wowser from Waverley."

Norton (one of the "Wild Men of Sydney") went on to define what it referred to: "a single, simple word that does at once describe, deride, and denounce that numerous, noxious, pestilent, puritanical, kill-joy push - the whole blasphemous, wire-whiskered brood."

And thus Alderman Waterhouse, the Wowser from Waverley, made his way into history.

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