Echos

Some people in a chatroom were having a debate about the various sizes of beer (both glass and bottle) and what they are called in various parts of Australia… someone mentioned the term “echo”, which does sound familiar from my Adelaide days.

I was hoping some of my contacts from uni who are known to partake of much more of this type of beverage and hence are more likely to understand the origins of the term would be able to enlighten me with some details – so I sent out an email asking for help.

In the mean time, I did find some information on Google…

http://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/p/dictionary/slang-e.html

echo – noun
1. one who reflects or imitates another: What are you? An echo?
2. SA a small returnable beer bottle.

But I was hoping for a bit more detail.

I got a response from Nick:

As I understand it..

Before they had deposits on beer bottles in SA they were called stubbies, then when they introduced the deposits (I’m told this was
about 1982), they got called echoes, because they kept coming back. I guess since then it’s reverted to stubby again.

Nick

It will be interesting to see whether anyone comes up with any more information on this completely useless bit of trivia.