billabong

thumb|A billabong along Scrubby Creek at Berrinba, Queensland|Berrinba Wetlands, [[Queensland, 2014]] thumb|A billabong in the Northern Territory thumb|A billabong on the Goulburn River in Victoria In Australian English, a billabong ( ) is a small body of water, usually a permanent one created by a change in course or the flooding of a river. It is variously used to refer to oxbow lakes, dry creek beds that fill after heavy rainfall and channels of rivers that lead to dead-ends or backwaters. The term is likely borrowed from Wiradjuri, an Aboriginal Australian language of New South Wales.

==Etymology== The word billabong is most likely derived from the Wiradjuri language of southern New South Wales, which "describes a pond or pool of water that is left behind when a river alters course or after floodwaters recede". According to the Macquarie Dictionary (2005), the original term bilabaŋ means "a watercourse that runs only after rain", with bila meaning "river", and possibly combined with bong or bung, meaning "dead". The attribution of this last part of the word was contested in 2004 by Frederick Ludowyk of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, whose view was that "-bong" or "-bang" was a suffix "signifying a continuation in time or space". Ludowyk writes that bong meaning "dead" is not a Wiradjuri word, but may have been picked up or assumed from the word "bung", which was originally a Yagara word used in the pidgin widely spoken across Australia.