5 days ago
I just realised Australians are some of the only people in the world who use the word 'eisteddfod'
If you grew up in Australia and ever spent weekends in a scratchy leotard and hair slicked back into a bun so tight it could cut off circulation, there's one word you probably used without ever questioning it: eisteddfod.
To Australians, it's used to describe a dance or band/music competition and is mentioned almost daily throughout the school week.
It stems from Welsh culture and roughly translates to 'sitting together'.
While most Aussies assume it's a universal term, those who utter the word in front of almost anyone overseas or expats are often met with instant confusion.
Why? The answer lies in a history lesson that stretches back to 19th century Wales.
An eisteddfod in its original form is a centuries‑old festival of poetry, music and performance, with roots that date back to at least the 12th century.
In Wales, these events are still about celebrating the Welsh language, culture, and music - with competitions in singing, harp playing, and poetry recitation.
When Welsh immigrants arrived in Australia in the 1800s, particularly in areas linked to mining and wool industries, they brought the tradition with them.
At first, the Australian versions followed the Welsh format: singing competitions, a bit of poetry, and perhaps some instrumental music.
But somewhere along the way, something changed.
Someone slipped a dance routine into the programme, and before long, the word eisteddfod had been redefined here.
What was once a cultural celebration became, in Australia, a catch‑all term for performing arts competitions - and eventually, almost exclusively for dance contests.
'They aren't just for dance,' one Reddit user explained.
'I've been in them for singing and drama also - they are competitions for the performing arts, which is why they are called an eisteddfod.'
'The eisteddfod in Wales is usually a singing competition, with maybe a bit of poetry. That started early in Australia. Dance eisteddfods were named after that,' another wrote.
In linguistic terms, it's what's known as a 'semantic shift' - a change in meaning that can happen when a word migrates across cultures.
The Welsh diaspora kept the name, but as the decades passed, the content of the competitions in Australia evolved.
Now, for generations of Aussie kids - and their long‑suffering parents - eisteddfod is synonymous with weekend marathons of costume changes, side‑stage pep talks, and the sound of tap shoes clattering down a high‑school hall.
It's an institution that's spawned an entire subculture of sequin‑studded competitiveness.
Meanwhile, in Wales, the word still means what it always has - a festival celebrating language and music - which explains why international friends might appear baffled by the sentence 'we've got three eisteddfods this term'.
So while the rest of the world may have never heard of the word, in Australia it's part of the fabric of growing up - as familiar as school assemblies, meat pies at the tuckshop, and the smell of hairspray in the change room.
