wowsern.

1899 Truth 8 Oct. 5 Willoughby ‘Wowsers’ Worried. The ‘Talent’ get a ‘Turn’... Ten young men were fined..for having behaved in a riotous manner on the Military Rd.

1909 Daily News 1 Apr. 4 ‘Wowser’ is a term applied by certain portions of the Australian Press to parsons of all denominations, more particularly to those who are fanatical on temperance and social evils.

1912 Nation 11 May 214/2 A wowser is one who wants to compel everybody else..to do whatever he thinks right, and abstain from everything he thinks wrong.

1918 Chrons. N.Z.E.F. 79/2 The Wowzers look with disdain upon the ‘Come and have a spot, old boy’ kind of welcome.

1937 R. A. Knox Double Cross Purposes ii. 40 I hope to God the old wowzer didn't see we'd been at it. He's as sharp as a weasel.

1939 R. Campbell Flowering Rifle i. 18 Where wowsers may discharge their wondrous lore Who'll ‘fight for peace’, and yet disarm for war.

1939 X. Herbert Capricornia xviii. 233 Only ones't got a victory outer that flamin' war was the blasted wowsers!

1941 C. Barrett Coast of Adventure iii. 56 Men without vision or liberal views. We might call them ‘wowsers’ today.

1949 D. M. Davin Roads from Home i. v. 72 The good old days were gone. And it wasn't only the wowsers that had spoilt everything.

1961 N.Y. Times 12 Feb. 36/1 A relentless wowser (prohibitionist)..banned saloons.

1963 Economist 3 Aug. 422/2 Some alien wowser such as Senator Goldwater.

1970 N.Z. Listener 12 Oct. 13/2 A bit late to find that out, you snobbish ratbag wowser.

1975 D. Stuart Walk, trot, canter & Die xxiii. 137 But now in me old age I'm a wowser an' I don't have to worry about anything. I'd have a bottle of whisky in the packs…but most trips it wouldn't even get opened, so you can't say I was a drunkard.

1977 Times 18 Mar. 18/7 This country's pattern of..licensing hours..is the work of wowzers of every description.

1981 M. Gee Meg xiv. 142 You won't drink with me, will you? Didn't think so. I'm stuck in a family of wowsers.

1982 Times 7 Dec. 12/6 These authoritarian wowsers would like to see a law forbidding anybody to watch any programme they disapprove of.

1933 F. Clune Try Anything Once 122 They had lost their dash and grown wowserish.

1966 New Statesman 4 Mar. 289/2 After a time, I warmed even to Stennis and Morse; though the first was narrow and wowserish.

1983 Age (Melbourne) 3 Dec. 11/2 Coming hard on the heels of the casino inquiry, which also recommended in the negative, the Government's decision on poker machines may give it a puritanical or wowserish image.

1936 M. Franklin All that Swagger l. 377 Novels which..provoked attention by their unreticent details of bodily functionings and provided capital sport when flung in the face of fin de siècle wowserism.

1966 G. W. Turner Eng. Lang. in Austral. & N.Z. i. 21 Wowserism is prohibition elevated into a philosophy.

1971 Observer 14 Mar. 15/2 Australia's peculiar ‘wowserism’, the often unpredictable censorship of films, books and shows by the authorities, is largely a function of older Australia.

1984 Daily Tel. 24 Aug. 10/4 When Pierre Trudeau visited Australia in 1970 he told the natives: ‘You have wowserism; we have Toronto.’

1909 Daily News 1 Apr. 4 Their followers are called ‘Wowserites’, and their propaganda ‘Wowserism’.