At a loss for a place to start, I turned to the Oxford English Dictionary and clicked on “Lost for Words?”. Three choices were presented to me: zephyr, macker, and pax.
Right from the start, I zeroed in on macker because of the what I have already associated with it. Without even searching for a definition, I have a good old American place to start: McDonald’s. My boyfriend and I have long had a sort of love-hate relationship with McDonald’s. He loves it; I hate it. He and his circle of friends affectionately refer to the joint—and the Big Mac—as “Mackers.” While my boyfriend and his buddies may have a special place for “Mackers” somewhere inside of them, I associate the stale smell of the mog mingling with the dripping smell of grease-lathered food that I inhale as I run by “Mackers” on the city bike path.
An overtly greased, all-American heart-attack factory, however, is far from the entry that the Oxford English Dictionary displays: “A new recruit; a newcomer.” The pronunciation listed in British or Australian (so the “r” at the end is dropped). The subject category is military; the regional category is Australia; and the usage category is slang, coming from another slang term macaroon, also meaning new recruit.
Interesting. While my own experience with the word is far from the original, both terms are slang.
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