Here’s some more - these are apparently Saskatchewanisms!
“Skronk” - to have sex
“Offsale” - where we all buy beer of course!
“LB” (pronounced ‘ell-bee’)- the liquor board store
“Hitting the rhubarb” - hitting the ditch
“Hitting the binders” - slamming on the brakes
“Bush party” - Not a celebration of the U.S.President’s accomplishments, rather, to gather at any location on the prairie, start burning anything that will ignite and consume alcohol regardless of season. The person who still has alcohol left at the end of the night is usually the designated driver.
“Co-op” - a store where you can charge things, not a leaky
condo in Vancouver
“Dinner” - known as lunch everywhere else on the planet
“Grid Roads” - gravel roads in rural areas.
“Gotch” or “Gitch” - undergarments - male or female.
“Vico” - that famous chocolate milk
“Beep” - equally famous sugar-filled orange drink
“Bunny Hug” - known as a hooded sweatshirt in other parts of Canada.
“Siwash” - Cowichan sweater
“Storm Rider” - those jean jackets made by Lee with the corduroy collar…
“Red Eye” - Beer and tomato juice or an alcohol driven slo-pitch tournament
“Slo-pitch” - A form of baseball that uses a softball thrown underhand high into the air. Copious amounts of Red eye are consumed.
“Eversharp” - A mechanical pencil.
Musings on Toque:
I spent 3 months near a little town in Quebec called, “Le(la?) Toque”. At the time I would annoy our very french speaking hosts by calling it ‘The Hat’. This is also what many locals call the town of Medicine Hat, Alberta.
And it’s the fluffy ball bobbing around on the top that really makes it a toque IMO. Otherwise, it’s just another block heater.
BTW, for those who may be unfamiliar with its pronunciation, the word ‘toque’ is pronounced, “tuke”…not ‘Toe-kay’ or ‘toke’ as some of my family still south of the border thought when they first saw the printed word.
On Mickey
And thus the coinage ‘Mickey pocket’ for the inside breast pocket on a coat or sport coat; perfectly sized to conceal the slightly curved bottle so as to fit nicely against your rib cage.
So, what about booter Isn’t that a Canadian term or just a local colloquialism? Which then begs the same question of gum boots and runners.
I had always heard gum boots as rubber boots or simply, rubbers before my arrival into Canada. I snicker when I hear that now, because I mentally picture someones feet with…you know, someone trying to put on…oh never mind. Runners or course, were always referred to as sneakers.
The ‘ou’ sound also has the sound of ‘oa’ in some parts. If some tells you they’ve been ‘out and about’, you might think they said ‘oat in a boat’.
In Jan Harold Brunvand’s first urban legend book, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, he includes, in his story about “The Nude and the RV,” a “Canadianism,” specifically, a vehicle, a police car operated by the Mounties, catching up to an RV to return a stranded spouse. Brunvand mentioned this as a Canadianism, but a Canadian I spoke to about the story never heard of “overhauling” in that sense. For the record, the story was set in Alberta.
** featherlou **, “dinner” meaning the meal at mid-day, clings tenaciously to life in the US, or at least in this part of it. However, it’s most often used by people who are currently mid-aged or older, since most young people use it to mean the same thing as “supper.” ( to be honest, I would be far more inclined to call the evening meal dinner than supper, and I know I’m not alone)
This leads to a lot of frustrating cross generational conversations:
" So when did you want to get together?"
" How about dinner-time?"
" 6 then?"
" No, noon!"
" Then you mean lunch!"
" No, dinner!"
" Dinner is at night!"
" No, supper is at night!" etc etc
Oh yeah, the fun never stops. Can we do New Englandisms next?
As noted above, a co-op is a department store. Many years ago when the big chain stores wouldn’t give farmers credit, local people would fund their own stores largely by selling memberships. Members used to be able run a tab, and still get back a dividend from any profits. (If you’re in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, and buy stuff at the Co-op, give the number 2087 and help my mother out! Why do I remember that?) Credit unions generally work the same way for banking.
Grid roads of course are mostly laid out in 1-by-2 mile blocks (so every quarter-section had road frontage), except for the “correction line” where the right-angled grid has to be adjusted for the lines of longitude converging toward the North Pole.
Finally, in Saskatchewan when I was growing up, a bunny-hug sweatshirt needed that single across-the-belly pocket. I don’t know if it was a requirement, or just the only kind the co-op had for sale.
Some notes - my feet were always covered by runners growing up in Saskatchewan. I’ve never heard “booters”, though.
Tatiana, I’ve heard pogey in SK and AB - maybe it’s just all the misplaced Saskatchewanians saying it here.
I’ve decided that I’m not going to cave and start calling bunny-hugs “hoodies” - it just ain’t right. Bad enough that I have to call thongs “flip-flops” because of the other meaning of thong.
For my parents (members of The Greatest Generation [TM], one from California and one from West Virginia), the basic meals were breakfast, lunch and supper. The word “dinner” refer to a large, elaborate meal, which would sometimes but not always occur at suppertime. On Thanksgiving, for instance, we might have had dinner at grandmother’s in the early afternoon, followed by a late-night supper at home.
Why do I suddenly feel like a contemporary of Laura Ingalls Wilder?
Is thong = “flip-flop” a Canadianism? I had my co-worker in gales of laughter yesterday, telling her how my husband always wears my thongs and I should really get him some of his own. Never thought about it but it’s pretty funny.
As a Southern Ontario gal I haven’t heard some of those others. Mickey, toque (in England they’re “beanies”), runners, hydro.
My favourite Canadianism is the “May Two-Four,” which was meant to be a celebration for Queen Victoria but instead is widely acknowledged as the time to take a case of beer to the cottage.
I’ve given an explanation of the “oot” thing before. Basically, we pronounce that vowel closer to (not as) “oat,” and a lot of American lects have it closer to “awt” or “at”. So we end up sounding like “oot” in comparison.
(A previous minister at Mom’s church was from Nova Scotia; Mom was highly confused to hear her preach about the perils of dote.)
Thanks for the clarification matt_mcl. I had no idea that the slight nuance in spelling referred to different head gear.
featherlou, I should have offered a little more detail on the ‘booter’ definition. We would go wading in spring run-off puddles and of course wear rubber boots. When you wade too deep and the water goes over the tops of your rubber boots, you have yourself a first rate ‘booter’. We used this term in BC, as well the term soaker to mean the same thing, and MrseNiGma tells me she these in Alberta as well.
We always called the sweatshirts with the single pockets in the front ‘Kangaroos’ beause of the pouch-like pocket. which is really nothing like a marsupial’s
Why do I remember that?) Credit unions generally work the same way for banking.