[1] In Australia, it is often used as an affectionate insult[2] for someone who is, or is perceived to be, unfashionable, lacking self-consciousness about their appearance and/or with poor social skills yet affable and amusing.
The term may be simply affectionate, such as when it was used to describe the recipes in the enduringly popular The Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book.
Originally a word meaning the dried faeces left dangling from the wool on a sheep's rear end,[6] the word dag is more commonly used in colloquial Australian English to refer to someone's unfashionable, often eccentric or idiosyncratic style or demeanor together with poor social skills and amusing manner.
However, "dag" is differentiated from terms like dork, nerd or geek by virtue of having no particular association with a drive for intellectual pursuits or interest in technology and no particular tendency towards being a loner.
[10] An eccentric character portrayed by Abbey Lee Kershaw in the Australian science-fiction film Mad Max: Fury Road is named The Dag.
Environmentalist and TV personality Steve Irwin and comedian Spike Milligan, when he was resident in Australia, have all displayed the idiosyncrasies commonly associated with affable dags.