Where "A Wigwam for a Goose's Bridle" Comes From
This one started life in Britain as "a whim-wham for a goose's bridle" — "whim-wham" being an old English word for a trinket or frivolous little object, used since at least the 1830s as a deliberately meaningless answer to nosy questions.
When the saying reached Australia, "whim-wham" — a word that had mostly dropped out of everyday English — got mistakenly swapped for the more familiar "wigwam." The phrase is first recorded in Australian print in 1917 and has stuck around as a classic family saying ever since.
""What are you making, Dad?" "A wigwam for a goose's bridle.""
How Aussies Actually Use It
The phrase is almost always used by an adult fending off a curious child's repeated questions — "What are you doing?", "What's in the box?", "What are you making?" — with a cheerfully evasive, made-up answer instead of the real one.
It's meant to be funny and gentle rather than sharp, more "stop asking and let it be a surprise" than a genuine brush-off.
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