I don't see "transport" or "transport truck" though. I think It's an Ontario expression and it sounds kind of weird to me as an Albertan.
"two-four" is there and can confirm that is more an eastern term as well. Never heard the term until I spent a year out in Ontario many years ago. Still hasn't really made its way to the west in all that time.
Totally minor difference, but it did feel jarring when I heard it differently from the first time as someone who grew up in Alberta.
What do you call them?
There are also various different ways to pronounce “crayon”; is that also true in Canada? For example I pronounce it with one syllable: “cran”, just like the beginning of “cranberry”. I get the feeling that’s not the majority pronunciation but it’s not exactly rare either (at least where I grew up).
In UK it is two syllables.
Pencils have cores based on graphite or charcoal.
Pencil crayons have cores based on wax or oil, with pigments added. This is basically the composition of crayons or pastels. Then it's wrapped in wood like a pencil. Thus ... "pencil crayon".
I've never heard Pencil Crayon, in British Columbia, but then again I did live in the U.S. for all of my school years.
I assume toilet hands were an unspoken issue, because there was no possible way to traverse from the toilet room to the washroom without touching anything.
For a complete tangent, I’ll mention that Soviet toilets had a “poop shelf” so that people could eyeball their stool to gauge their health. One flaw of this design is that there was no odour suppression offered by toilets that immediately immerse stool in water.
Meaning 1a is the object, 1b is the room. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/toilet
The easy to remember terms and will work nearly anywhere without giving offence are: "loo" in a residential property or "gents/ladies" for a non-residential property.
Restroom, and a variety of others, might be slightly more usage specific but still… wouldn’t be unexpected or weird, I’d say?
I think only people of a very specific upbringing ever call it that here. Certainly nobody in my circles would.
> While brown bread may have contained some molasses in the early 1900s, post-WWII it was usually made without. So Canadian brown bread is, unlike Boston-style bread, not sweet (see the 1909 quotation) and also distinct from Irish brown bread, though the latter may have inspired it.
Brown bread is sweet, and you are supposed to cut it up into little hockey pucks and toast it. It is the perfect shape when it comes out of the can.
1860’s apparently.
https://www.britishfoodinamerica.com/A-Number-of-Historical-...
> You're really not missing out.
It it rare in matters of taste to be able to say it, but you sir or madam are objectively incorrect!
Ok well, maybe that is a bit over the top. But anyway, since it comes in a can, hopefully anyone curious can just try it. Pop it in the toaster oven, put some cream cheese on it, and have it for breakfast. It is a treat, IMO.
The boston canned brown bread i always assumed was a touristy thing, not something regularly consumed.
In my experience "brown bread" is a synonym for whole wheat bread. If you go order a sandwich and they ask what bread you want it on and you say "brown", you're getting whole wheat (or maybe 60% whole wheat... just not white).
I'd be very confused if I ever got this molasses-sweetened bread everyone is talking about.
It’s made with ungodly amounts of molasses. My grandmother used to make it with lard or shortening, yikes.
If I was offered brown bread and got a boring whole wheat, I'd be sorely disappointed.
[1] https://my-mothers-cook-books.ca/2021/05/29/brown-bread-vs-p...
Or do like my Mom did: mix a little peanut butter with molasses into a slurry on top.
All of this will kill you, of course, but it does taste good!
https://www.britishfoodinamerica.com/A-Number-of-Historical-...
Although the consistency is more like a dense, very moist bread. It wouldn’t be great for a conventional sandwich. Could reasonably steal the English muffin’s job, though. Or a regular muffin. Maybe a bit messier.
https://gikken.co/mate-translate/blog/from-darts-to-cigarett...
Basically, when the snow starts to melt in the spring, you'll sometimes accidentally step on some thin ice that leads directly to a puddle underneath and soak your boot. It sucks! Also, we would often call these "booters" in Manitoba, where I'm from.
The film Slapshot with hockey banter/ribbing (at a Gilmore Girls-type pace).
My grandpa called toonies "bearbucks", which isn't listed, but is in one of the quotes on the toonie entry. No listing for "reef" as in yanking on something, though I don't know if that's a Canadianism or not.
Apparently it's a direct translation from French and is pretty exclusive to Quebec English and the Easternmost part of Ontario (which is heavily French).
And Saskatchewan. Which the site notes is "a bit of a mystery".
Also found "parkade" interesting--apparently it's still much more heavily used in Western Canada, and they attribute that to it having been "seeded" by some Hudson's Bay advertisements run at their original 6 locations all in Western Canada.
Some other words/terms that surprised me: renoviction, gong show, kerfuffle, off-sale, stagette
I'm not sure why we both ended up with "dressed" given the French is literally "all garnishes / toppings" or "wholly garnished / topped". I'm sure some linguist could probably do a dissertation on this or something. And hopefully also cover how Saskatchewan ended up with using "all dressed" because I'm really curious about that outlier.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dress
> 4. (also figuratively) To adorn or ornament (something). [from 15th c.]
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/garnish
> 1. To decorate with ornaments; to adorn; to embellish.
(Bonus: "garnish" is etymologically related to "warn". There are many such other pairs in English, e.g. "guarantee" / "warranty" and "guard" / "ward". (As I understand it: the Gauls could pronounce the "g", but the Franks couldn't.)
I'm in Ontario but in a heavily French area (i.e., East of Ottawa) and "toute garni / all dressed" is common. You'll find it places like Ottawa as well given the proximity to Quebec and French population.
https://youtu.be/eIoTpkM5N64?si=FnGploZrLZ1XRVXO&utm_source=...
What on Earth. Wikipedia tells me:
> An all-dressed chip called The Whole Shabang is produced by American prison supplier Keefe Group. It became available to the general public in 2016.[4] Frito-Lay began selling all-dressed Ruffles potato chips in the United States that same year.[5]
I had assumed the entire time that everyone uses this term for potato chips (and that everyone has the flavour) and that the Quebecois were just being weird by also applying it to pizza.
--
"Renoviction" is a very recent neologism that's mainly used in the specific major cities where it's an issue (because of the housing market).
"Gong show" I think is relatively old-fashioned (as in Gen X) by comparison. I'm actually surprised Americans don't say that, given that the actual show was on NBC.
I can easily find "kerfuffle" in supposedly American online dictionaries so I think their claim is rather dubious. On the flip side, I've never in my life heard "off-sale"; and in Ontario it's only quite recently (https://www.ontario.ca/document/alcohol-master-framework-agr... https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1003988/ontario-consumers...) that you can even legally purchase beer and wine at a grocery store.
Off-sale has long been used in Alberta. I have a memory of asking my parents what it meant when I was a kid (and I am in my 40s, now).
There's no mystery. This is rubbish research. In parts of Manitoba we also use all-dressed for the same purpose (and of course chips). The unifying factor is French culture. The Riel Rebellion helped bring tremendous franocphones, and French culture out west. There are areas like St. Boniface in Winnipeg where s some people speak only French. The Metis are in both Manitoba and Quebec...
Actually they should just watch a few AvE videos, he’s a goldmine for old Canadian lingo.
Definitely less common than in BC/WA/OR though.
Klahowya tillicum!
Yes. Unless you are like me, you think you are good at inferring from context, never lookup a word in the dictionary and think for a few years it means something while it actually means the opposite.
It probably takes me a good seven to ten times of looking up a new-to-me word to really nail it down. As a result, a lot of my blog/personal writing is filled with odd phrasings of things because I never quite learned the prescriptive way of using said word.
1. https://www.thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/word/wollah
Also, a brown-noser should not be confused with a blue-noser.
in LA it's most definitely "the 5" and state highways are also named with their numbers with no distinguishing. it's all "the N"
Parkway, Freeway, Highway, Tollway, Expressway, Interstate, Byway, etc
https://www.aeso.ca/aeso/understanding-electricity-in-albert...
The name of the utility companies in most provinces was probably an influence. Until 1999 in Ontario it was the Ontario Hydro-Electric Power Commission, shortened normally to Ontario Hydro. Manitoba Hydro. Hydro Quebec. I think in Toronto they still stamp manhole covers with THES (Toronto Hydro-Electric System).
When I immigrated to Canada (Ontario) a decade ago, the term hydro was the most confusing to me. I assumed it meant water supply or plumbing, but it was always in the wrong context. I imagined the disaster of hooking up the plumbing to the electrical service! Now it’s completely natural to call it “hydro” but confusing at first.
When I got a new job in the US, my boss took me and several coworkers to a restaurant for lunch as a way to welcome me. When the waitress asked what I wanted to drink I asked for a beer. I then heard one of my coworkers who was sitting next to me ask me incredulously, "What are you doing?" I responded that I was ordering a beer. He said that I could get fired for that. That's when I realized that for a country that seemed so similar to Canada on the surface it was quite different below that surface.
Though I have worked at places if the company was paying for the lunch they won't pay for alcohol. In those cases we've always asked for the beers to be on a separate check so the expense report is easier.
Everyone says « pastèque » in mainland France, where I've lived for over 40 years. I've never seen melon d'eau and I doubt anyone will understand it unless they know the English word.
I've heard "flour" uttered with the French pronounciation (fl-oo-r, instead of homonym of "flower") in New-Brunswick. I was floored. Took me a while to figure out what they meant.
Clearly, this originates from non-English speakers reading "flour" on a sign and just running with it.
Also, consider that the British conquest happened before watermelon was highly prevalent in France or North-America. It's unsurprising to see terminology diverge in this case.
Type 1 – Origin: a form and its meaning were created in what is now Canada
Type 2 – Preservation: a form or meaning that was once widespread in many Englishes, but is now preserved in Canadian English in the North American context or beyond; sometimes called “retention”
Type 3 – Semantic Change: forms that have undergone semantic change in Canadian English
Type 4 – Culturally Significant: forms or meanings that have been enshrined in the Canadian psyche and are widely seen as part of Canadian identity
Type 5 – Frequency: forms or meanings that are Canadian by virtue of frequency
Type 6 – Memorial: forms or meanings now widely considered to be pejorative
Non-Canadian: forms or meanings once thought to be Canadian for which evidence is lacking
It's missing.
For example, in Ontario (perhaps elsewhere in Canada) the word asphalt is pronounced like “ash fault” (ˈæʃfɑlt) as opposed to U.S. pronunciation like “ass fault.” (ˈæsfɔlt)
Also “pasta” is often ˈpæstə as opposed to ˈpɑstə in American English.
I don't think any of that is particularly Canadian though.
It's derived from Iroquois Nation words and used by French settlers to refer to Indigenous people. The word "Canada" was used by explorer Jacques Cartier to refer to the city now called "Québec". It broadly refered to the territory of a specific Indigenous tribe. (could be derogatory, but seemingly accurate / matter-of-fact)
After the British invasion, the British start using "Canadian" to describe both First Nations and French settlers (derogatory, "non-British)
Over time, "Canadian" generally refers to habitants of Canada.
Related: the hockey team "Les Canadiens" is from Montréal in the province of Québec in Canada. It's the oldest hockey team (1909, pre-NHL). The name is a reappropriation of the word Canadian at a time where it was used derogatively against "French-Canadians" (term that didn't exist at the time). Their chant "go, habs, go" refers to the "habitants", i.e., French settlers.
Related: "province" originates from latin used by Romans to described conquered territory. This is the term founders of Canada in 1867 decided to use instead of "state"
For anyone interested in Canadian history, always check-out the French version of a wikipedia page (and translate it). English pages have a lot of hand-waving and start history with their conquest. Also, ChatGPT makes outrageous historical mistakes all the time, such as suggesting that French-Canadians were a minority group in the 19th century
edit: format, typos
My absolute favourite Canadianism is how, on wikipedia, the 401 (major highway that goes through Toronto) is "colloquially referred to as the four-oh-one" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Highway_401).
"No guff"--meaning something like "no, really?" in a sarcastic sense
"My foot"--maybe something similar to "my ass!"
And later, when living in Montreal, I remember several expressions that were basically direct translations from the French
"Me, I..."--from the French "Moi, je..."
"In place of"--instead of "instead of"
sophacles•14h ago
Is there a similar dictionary for US midwesternisms, or Texisms, or really any region?