The colloquial Australian-English phrase (as) game as an ant (also (as) game as a bulldog ant, (as) game as a pissant, etc.) means: plucky, courageous, willing to put up a fight against considerable odds.
This phrase occurs, for example, in the following two texts:
1-: From the column By the Way, published in Smith’s Weekly (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 3rd November 1923 [page 17, column 5]:
LAST month a big box tree snapped off 12ft. from the ground in a wind-storm at Pallamallawa (N.S.W.) and crushed Geo. McNeill, a timber-feller. His leg, jaw, and shoulder broken, the bones protruding, on his one good arm he dragged himself 250 yds. to where he’d left a billy of water. Twenty-four hours later they picked him up in the same spot, still alive, and game as a meat-ant.—A.J.T.
2-: From First picture show man stays faithful to the last, by Bernard Zuel, published in The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 20th November 1993 [page 3, column 1]:
Edward Allan Australia Tom, born a day after Australia Day in 1902, has spent almost every day of his life since 1923 showing, talking about, or driving across inhospitable terrain to present movies.
[…]
[…] In 1923, he saw his first silent film in the hall at Manildra.
He was hooked, dragging his brother off to the local bank manager for a loan to set up their own travelling picture show.
They got the £600, but the fact that his brother liked a drink in Manildra’s Royal Hotel saw the disapproving bank manager slap on a 10 per cent flat rate interest charge.
“I was game as a pissant and said, ‘right, we’ll give it a go’,” Mr Tom recalls.
—Cf. also the colloquial Australian-English phrase (as) game as Ned Kelly.
—Cf. also the colloquial phrase (as) drunk as a pissant, meaning: extremely drunk.
The following two texts explain the phrase (as) game as a pissant—also (as) brave) as a pissant—and the second one gives a hypothesis as to the origin of the phrase (as) drunk as a pissant:
1-: From The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 26th April 1986 [page 40, column 4]:
Pissants just a load of old ants
PISSANTS are just ants, old enough for a mention in literature in 1662 (“a multitude of pissants and vermins”) 1, and still apparently active.
The modern colloquialism brave as a pissant is in line with ant-like aggression. The companion drunk as a pissant would be hard to verify. The Australian slang verb to pissant around, meaning to mess around, implies some lack of purpose.
The Oxford Dictionary entry for pissant refers callers to pismire, also an ant, which is said to have gained its name from the urinous smell of an anthill, another point I have not verified. It had its day in 1385 in lines by Chaucer from The Summoner’s Tale:
He is as angry as a pissemyre
Though that he haue al that he kan desire. 2
ALAN PETERSON
1 This is a quotation from Confused Characters of Conceited Coxcombs: Or, A Dish of Trayterous Tyrants, dressed with Verjuice and and [sic] pickeled too Posterity. Together with their Camp-retinue and Fems Covert (London: Printed by T. M. for Typographus, 1661), by ‘Verax Philobasileus’ [page 14].
2 The Summoner’s Tale is one of The Canterbury Tales, by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400).
2-: From Right Words: A Guide to English Usage in Australia (Ringwood (Victoria): Viking, 1989), by the Australian author Stephen Murray-Smith (1922-1988)—as quoted in the column Passionate Reader, published in The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Saturday 29th April 1989 [Saturday Extra; page 6, column 1]:
S. J. Baker’s book ‘The Australian Language’, the ‘Macquarie Dictionary’, or G. A. Wilke’s [sic] ‘A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms’ […] quote the verb to pissant around and the phrases as game as a pissant and as drunk as a pissant, but nowhere is the word pissant itself listed or defined.
[…]
[…] The meaning of pissant. Our use and understanding of the word is that there is a species of (Australian?) ant that is small, aggressive and, even more than most ants, smells like urine when crushed. Thus a human who is called a pissant is regarded as small and unimportant but noisy and aggressive (and possibly able to leave a smell behind when crushed?).
[…]
To pissant around follows clearly enough. So does brave as a pissant. But drunk as a pissant is not so clear. Perhaps the aggressive behavior of pissants is reminiscent of drunks waving their arms about on the streets.
The earliest occurrences that I have found of the phrase (as) game as an ant (also as a bulldog ant, as a pissant, etc.) are as follows, in chronological order:
1-: From an account of a boxing match between Bob Eels, alias the Hawkesbury Pet, and Frank Simmonds, alias the Grampus, published in The Australian, Windsor, Richmond, and Hawkesbury Advertiser (Windsor, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 21st March 1874 [page 2, column 3]:
Round 2nd.—Both men came up as game as ants, and no time was lost in coming to business, some hits were exchanged and eventually the Pet got a good home blow into the victualing department of the Grampus.
2-: From an account of the annual exhibition organised by the Dubbo Pastoral and Agricultural Association, published in The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 17th May 1879 [page 775, column 1]:
The prize for the best draught horse (to be tried) was, after a test, awarded to Mr. Mathews’s Punch, a horse as stanch [sic] as an oak, and as game as an ant.
3-: From Sport in New Zealand, by a correspondent, published in The Australasian (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Saturday 4th October 1879 [page 429, column 2]:
As we only had one more day at our disposal before our return to town, Tranks, who said he wanted to give me as much variety for my money as possible, arranged with our host to give us a day’s pigging. The wild pigs were particularly numerous in the hills at the back of our host’s house, and […] our host was always glad to have a campaign with them; indeed, he kept his dogs for their especial benefit. It would be hard to say how they were bred, but they had a good deal of the mastiff, and more of the bull; and though beauty was perhaps not a strong point with them, they were thoroughly up to their business, and as game as bulldog ants.
4-: From The Queensland Figaro (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) of Saturday 14th May 1887 [page 795, column 1]:
The Croydon Prize Fight.
Harry Fleet and Jack O’Brien fought with bare knuckles, for £25 a side, at Cork Tree Creek, about six miles from Croydon, on March 27th. Both men were well matched, and were the biggest gluttons for punishment the North has ever seen. Each was a powerful hitter; each had about equal science (though Fleet seemed more at home in the ring); each was about mated as to weight and age, and each was as game as a soldier ant.
5-: From Sporting News, published in The Referee (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Thursday 23rd June 1887 [page 1, column 3]:
I notice that Honesty won the Forced Handicap at the Barrier Ranges race meeting. I could not possibly say how old he is, but he has a better acquaintance with the race meetings of the back blocks than any horse I know. Nobody knows what his breeding is, but he has all the appearance of a racehorse, and is as game as an ant, and a good finisher for a distance.
6-: From an account of a rugby match between University and Arfoma, published in The Australian Star (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Monday 9th July 1888 [page 7, column 3]:
The Arfomas did not lose heart by any means, but played as game as soldier ants, although their want of form was telling on them.
7-: From The Herald (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Friday 4th January 1889 [page 2, column 7]:
These are officers so old that they cannot see their own commands without the help of spectacles. But who ever saw an octogenarian aeronaut? And the man who after nineteen accidents in the business still comes up smiling and says “Boo!” to Fate would be described in the American tongue as “clear grit,” or in the happy imagery of the Australian dialect, as being “game as a bulldog ant.”
8-: From The Australian Gorilla, a letter by one J. G. Higgins, published in the Bowral Free Press, and Berrima District Intelligencer (Bowral, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 25th May 1889 [page 4, column 2]:
Our attention was drawn to the unusual and decided manifestations of terror exhibited by a large dog of the bull and mastiff species, which invariably accompanied me on my bush excursions, and which was, so to speak, “as game as a bulldog ant”—about the only living thing that will encounter fire.
9-: From the following title, published in The Australian Star (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Monday 24th June 1889 [page 7, column 3]:
FOOTBALL.
New South Wales v. Maori Team.
Return Match.
The Home Boys as Game as Soldier Ants.
The Ups and Downs of Football Life.
10-: From a portrait of the Australian rower John McLean, published in The Australian Star (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Thursday 15th May 1890 [page 5, column 1]:
M‘Lean is a man splendidly built for sculling. He stands a trifle over 6ft. high, is as straight as a rush, and as game as a bull soldier ant. He has worked his way to the front by sheer pluck, for when he first made his appearance on the river a couple of years ago he knew less of wager-boat pulling than he does now of roller-skating.
11-: From Turf Notes, by ‘Hipparion’, published in the Maryborough Chronicle, Wide Bay and Burnett Advertiser (Maryborough, Queensland, Australia) of Wednesday 3rd June 1891 [page 3, column 3]:
Loafer might possibly have won had his jockey possessed a whip, for he was going very well in the straight run home, and wants driving along to get the best out of him, being a dreadful slug, though as game as an ant when roused.
12-: From The Passing Show, by ‘Oriel’, published in The Argus (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Saturday 6th August 1892 [page 13, column 1]:
Sure there nivvor was seen
Such big wigs on the green—
Pass the word to M‘Guirk and Tom Monie;
Give us hould of yer paw,
And sing Erin-go-Bragh,
For there’s no sich a mon as Meloney.
[…]
The Im Pay, be me fate,
Has the wusht o’ the weight,
For he’s naither tall, brawny, or bony;
But as game as an ant,
Is that daisy beyant.
Shoor there’s no sich a mon as Meloney.
13-: From Aquatic Notes. At the Riverside, a description of “the five crews in training for the Trial Fours”, by ‘Clinker’, published in The Riverine Grazier (Hay, New South Wales, Australia) of Tuesday 26th June 1894 [page 2, column 7]:
No. 2’s time is wretched. He looks everywhere but at the man in front of him, and slides too slow. Bow pulls a neat oar, and is as game as the proverbial ant.
14-: From an account of the boxing match between Joe Newton and Billy Smith that took place in Melbourne on Monday 9th May 1898—account by ‘Counter’, published in The Referee (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Wednesday 11th May 1898 [page 6, column 3]:
The third round was a stiff and exciting one. Little Smith was game as a piss-ant, and the manner in which he got to work greatly shook Newton up.
15-: From Cattle Droving. Passing a Muddy Stream, by ‘H 7 H’, published in The Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette (Gympie, Queensland, Australia) of Saturday 19th May 1906 [page 7, column 7]:
Poor dumb brutes, they must have known that more than one of them was destined to “Pass out” in that mud stream, but they faltered not, and bravely followed their more healthy and, therefore, stronger, mates. They are a game and well plucked lot these U.T. cattle of Hill and Durack’s—game as pismore ants, and to see the poor, weak devils on their tails, and others on three legs struggling gamely across that stream was a sad, but still a grand sight.
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