I Believe "Canuck" Has Different Regional Meanings.

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Case in point, and I don’t have the dictionary right here with me to back this up, but I once looked up the meaning of the word, “canuck,” in an American English dictionary. The definition was along the lines of, “Dirty old man.”

Years later I went to visit a friend in the far northern reaches of Alberta. The subject of the meaning of, “canuck,” just happened to come up during my visit. The friend got offended when I told them the American definition. We then looked up the definition of the word in a Canadian English dictionary together, and lo and behold, the definition was, “Man of the great white north.”

Any one here who can back this up?

Link to Staff Report: What’s the origin of “Canuck”? – CKDH

2

I can’t find any evidence of this, in print or online dictionaries.

What is a Canuck? has a good discussion of the term (better than Dex’s What’s the origin of “Canuck”? column, I’m afraid) and nothing like that is mentioned.

3

The -uck ending in ‘Canuck’ is a French usage - If they want to sound mildly derogatory, they call Americans “Amerloques” (sounds like Amerluck), and Chinese “Chintoques” (Shintuck),
The explanation of Canada coming from an Iroquoian word (Iroquoian means the Hurons and Iroquois, and, yes, they prefer other names for themselves but let’s not get into that) meaning village is correct. It is written Kanata in contemporary Mohawk, but since Mohawks do not aspirate intermediary consonants like we do, it would sound like Canada to a European. Kanata is also the name of a part of Ottawa.

4

Without trying to sound as though I’m being a partisan and defending Dex–

– other than an expanded discussion of the Hockey team and a broken link that I would love to follow about the term “Johnny Canuck” existing in cartoons from the 1860’s(which could be true–I have few sources on this), what is better about the discussion?

5

I thought it was better written, had more examples, and went deeper into the history of usages. No big deal; it just worked better for me. YMMV, as the acronymists say.

6

Since this is a comment on a Staff Report, and not on one of Cecil’s Columns, I’m moving it to the appropriate forum.

The question of the -uck ending raised by markbellis is addressed in another thread as well. The impression is that this is recent vintage (1960s or so) and so would not be an origin of the term. It certainly didn’t show up in any research I did.

7

All this talk of Canucks (in various threads related to the column) and I haven’t seen one that mentioned the ‘Crazy Canucks’. In the 70’s, 4 Canadian downhill skiiers, Dave Irwin, Ken Read, Dave Murray, and Steve Podborski, who had a fearless, dare-devil-esque style. These guys beat the European skiiers on many an occasion and Canada was proud of the Crazy Canucks!

8

The -oque ending is used in “Argot”, an informal form of French - it’s not a separate language, rather just the “popular register”.

What’s going on with Canuck ( also written Canoque, Canaque) is called “resuffixation” - - the word first gets shortened and then a suffix gets stuck on. In informal English, Australian and Oklahoman get shortened to Aus- and Ok- and then -ie gets tacked on to form “Aussie” and “Okie”.

There are quite a few “suffixes argotiques” besides -oque, like -uche, or -ard - for a fuller discussion see “Dictionnaire de l’argot francais et de ses origines” by Jean-Paul Colin.

-oque is still used in popular French today, but it goes back hundreds of years . “The system of
of the deformation of endings…appeared at the start of the 17th Century and developed little by little under the influence of several Southern European suffixes, particularly Italian”, Albert Dauzat, “Les Argots”, (Paris, 1929). I understand there is also a well-developed system of suffixes in Spanish.

Argot is not written down that much in French, since it is a spoken form of the language, but some writers, like Francois Villon, Vidocq and Celine have written in it.

I notice that many sources give ridiculous etymologies for ‘Canuck’ - one even suggested it came from Hawaiian, and another thought it was from the Irish family name ‘Connaught’, and most French-Canadian dictionaries think it is a perjorative word from English. I would think that most people in Canada would not be that familiar with argot, even if they were French-Canadian, as they do not use this form in popular speech, perhaps because their ancestors came from Normandy and other parts of North-west France.

Some French-Canadians do take offense at the informality of the word ‘Canuck’, but others are proud to use it - There is a major camping and outdoor gear manufacturer in Quebec called “Kanuk”.