Wowser Definition
(Australia, New Zealand, derogatory) One with strong moral views against excessive consumption of alcohol, gambling, pornography, etc., who seeks to promulgate those views.
Alternative form of wowzer.
Origin of Wowser
A story has it that gospellers in the streets of Clunes, Victoria in the 1870s were called rousers but one of the town councillors had a speech impediment and couldn't pronounce his "R"s, thus giving wowser. (Reference: Bill Wannan, Australian Folklore, Lansdowne Press, 1970, reprint 1979 ISBN 0-7018-1309-1, under "Wowser", page 568.)
From Wiktionary
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John Norton, an early enemy of wowsers (temperance sense), claimed it to be an acronym for "We Only Want Social Evils Remedied", but that is likely a folk etymology.
From Wiktionary
Possibly from dialectal wow to howl, complain of imitative origin
From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
From UK dialect. In the pro-temperance sense, Australian from early 1900s.
From Wiktionary
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