Meanings
- AustraliaNew ZealandcolloquialuncountableHard work.
The men who did all the hard yakka believed in a short cut – shoot the bastards; it was cheaper and easier.
1988, Tom Cole, Hell West and Crooked, page 2472 more examples
somebody sits down and does the solid, hard yakka of talking his way through with the waterside workers and with the union movement generally
1991, Kim Beazley, Australian House of RepresentativesAt the age of sixteen, boy it was hard yakka, pouring fifty ton of red hot molten gun metal from the big firebrick lined oil furnace almost every day of the working week.
1998, Keith B. Saunders, Myall Road, page 37
Origin
- Yagarayaga“work”
- Englishhard yakka
From hard + yakka, from Yagara yaga (“work”).
More words from Yagara
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
hard yakka. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hard%20yakka
“hard yakka.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hard%20yakka. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “hard yakka,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hard%20yakka.
Source: hard yakka on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.