Stand up Australia and take a bow. It’s a fact. We invented removalists. While some nations like to contest our claim to some of the world’s great inventions, (not naming names New Zealand… Pavlova was invented in Sydney and Lamingtons were invented in Queensland), they’ll never lay claim to removalists. It’s a truly unique Australian profession. We invented removalists and we’re the only nation in the world to have them.
How can we be so sure, we hear you ask. Well, the reason is simple: we coined the word and we’re the only people to use it. In honour of this great Australian invention, we thought we’d take a light-hearted look at the word we use to describe the people who help us to move house.
Now, before anyone says removalist is a strange or unusual word, consider the phrase used in North America. People use ‘moving my house’ more commonly than ‘moving’ or ‘moving house’ to describe the job. We don’t know about you, but ‘moving my house’ sounds like a lot of very unnecessary heavy lifting.
The origin of the word removalist is also another great example of Australian ingenuity. We took ‘removal’ and ‘ist’ and just stuck them together. ‘Removal’ describes the task, and ‘ist’ denotes a person who does or uses a thing. It’s practical, simple and effective.
We also like to think it was a forward thinking move on the part of the first person to coin the word, as it doesn’t imply gender. While men are typically the people you’ll see lifting furniture and boxes, we have a great team of women making sure moves go smoothly too. The definition of the word is also inclusive: A domestic removals company, a company that transports household contents when moving house. That’s why we proudly describe everyone in our company as a removalist.
Australian playwright David Williamson literally put the word centre stage with his 1971 play The Removalists. In an interview, David Williamson said his inspiration for the play was a story told to him by a removalist. That makes sense to us. We know removalists can crack a good yarn with the best of them. What better way to put you at ease during the stress of moving house.
Finally, as words go, removalists is pretty popular too. Definitions.net ranks it as the #264313 most popular word in the English language. Now, nobody is sure about the exact number of words in the English language, but there are over a million, so that puts removalists in the top 25%.
Keep up the good work Australia. One day, the rest of the world will wake up and realise just what a great word it is too.