From sweltering bush sheds to luxurious mansions with waterslides and mezzanine bedrooms — the word donga is today embraced by Australians for a wide range of structures.

Typically associated with temporary or demountable housing, donga has endured in local slang for about a century.

Yet linguists still do not really know where it came from.

"There's a little bit of mystery around this one," Rosie Billington, University of Melbourne linguistics researcher, told 105.7 ABC Darwin.

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One of the most prevalent theories is that the word's origins goes back centuries to Africa, where the Zulu and Xhosa word udonga made it into South African English and Afrikaans.

"We've dropped off a sound at the front and made it shorter that way," Ms Billington explained.

Defined as "a channel or gully formed by the action of water", it is thought Australians might have picked up this South African word during the country's participation in the Boer War between 1899 and 1902.

The first known appearances of the word donga in Australian English around 1900 could support this idea.

But for some years the word only appeared to be used in the South African sense to apply to natural features, as seen in 1913.

"These ... dongas ... watered only in times of heavy rain must seem a veritable haven of refuge to the animal life of the plains." — 1913 description cited by the ANU.

Yet if this is indeed the trajectory of donga to Australia, there remains a missing link about how it came to be applied to outback sheds and fly-in fly-out (FIFO) village housing.

"The interesting thing is how it went from [the environmental meaning] to the meaning of a dwelling," Ms Billington said.

Residence meaning appears during WWII

It was not until World War II that donga appeared to start being used by Australian writers in today's sense, Ms Billington said.

"The great number of mosquito-proof 'Dongas' erected on the beach." — 1941, Through: The Official Journal of Signals 8th Australian Division.

One theory is that the South African origin word as already used by Australians morphed during the time due to diggers digging sheltered areas, as per the African usage, during wartime.

"It might have been to do with a sheltered area. If you have sort of a gully using as a trench, if you're there during a war and taking shelter and using landscape features," Ms Billington said.

Yet the challenge to this theory is that in Papua New Guinea, where Australian troops fought during WWII, the word donga is also used.

And in PNG that word means a house.

Did the meaning of this luxe Top End donga originate from the Pacific or South Africa? ( 105.7 ABC Darwin: Will Tinapple )

Given this, it is possible that the Aussie slang word donga as applied to housing could have come from closer to home, while the meaning attached to South African landscape is a second and earlier coincidence.

Yet there are also challenges to this theory, with early usages of donga in Australian English having an unclear application that could mean either.

"And dossed in dongas ev'ry night/Daown [sic] in the old Dermain [sic]!" — Truth (Sydney) from 1900.

Other challenges to the PNG theory include the pronunciation of the Australian temporary housing usage word, which commonly is said with a soft G, as in dong-a.

"In South Africa it's probably donga-a, not the hard G," Ms Billington said.

Today, the Australian Macquarie Dictionary defines donga in two separate ways, with "out in the bush [and] flat, stony spinifexed land" and "portable accommodation" listed as separate meanings.

One thing is certain, for many Australians today donga is both a beloved slang word and a curious evolution of housing.

Do you live in a Northern Territory donga? The ABC wants you to get in touch.