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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2016
Discussions of the need for a Dictionary of Canadian English, during the past several years, have made it rather painfully obvious that most Canadians, lacking ready access to the Oxford English Dictionary and the Dictionary of American English, are unable to grasp the idea behind a dictionary based on historical principles. Others, while familiar with such works, have had little conception of the wealth of materials awaiting lexical exploitation in the field of Canadiana. It is understandable that Canadian scholars, inexperienced in the art of lexicography, should ifeel uncertain how to proceed about cultivation of ground that has for so long lain fallow. So that a beginning may be made, this selection of materials is offered as a suggestion of the lines that an historical Dictionary of Canadian English might follow.
I am grateful to the Canadian Linguistic Association and the Humanities Research Council of Canada for research grants that permitted extensive revision of this paper (first circulated in Mimeographed form at the Conference of Learned Societies, Ottawa, 1957).
It gives me pleasure to formally record my deep appreciation for the invaluable advice and friendly services of Dr. Walter S. Avis, Royal Military College, Kingston; Mr. Charles A. Crate, Yellowknife; Philip H. Godsell, F.R.G.S., Calgary; Dr. John E. Robbins, Encyclopedia Canadiana, Ottawa; Dr. Jacques Rousseau, National Museum of Canada, Ottawa; and Dr. M. H. Scargill, University of Alberta, Edmonton.
To the personnel of the Department of Labour Library, Ottawa; London Public Library; McGill University Library, Montreal; Parliamentary Library, Ottawa; Toronto Public Library; University of Toronto Library; and University of Western Ontario Library, London; I am thankful for the interest shown in digging out their dustiest old papers for my examination.
Thanks are also due to the many editors, teachers and missionaries who have furthered my studies through donations of newspapers, pamphlets and magazines for excerption. — C. J. L.
1 The DA incorporated the OED's citations in good faith, although both happened to refer to Labrador, since they were labelled “U.S.” !
2 Attention is directed to these theories, perhaps the most extensive ever printed. They are offered not only to show the sources of information that an editor might consult, in choosing; what he feels to be the strongest etymology, but to raise the question of whether such folk etymologies should not be included for their historical interest. Neither the OED nor DA essays any derivation for Bluenose; while in tne case of other equally controversial terms, such as Yankee and Dixie, it has been deemed sufficient to summarize one or two theories in addition to that accepted by the editor. As a result, scholars interested in tracing popular etymologies must start from scratch. Opinions are invited upon this point.
3 Easterners, knowing bluff only in the sense of a steep bank or cliff, seemed disappointed that it was not included in the original Sampling. That particular sense is amply documented in the DA from 1689, whereas the Prairie term, as noted, is apparently not in any dictionary, so has stronger claims to the limited space at my disposal.
4 Lexicographers, as well as travellers, have sometimes confused these people with the Chippewas or Ojibway Indiana, an Algonquian tribe of the Lake Superior region; the American College Dictionary (1951 printing, 78/1), for instance, specifies Chippewu as an Athabascan language “of northwest Canada and Alaska” !
5 Here is a prime example of various terms that are likely to be ignored by collectors for the DCE, simply because there is nothing to identify them as peculiarly Canadian. Certainly, endorsation does not have the ring of Canadian coinage, looking like an ordinary English word; the synonym, endorsement, is the term commonly used in the United States and, apparently, England, judging by entries in popular dictionaries.
6 Thalbitzer, a Danish ethnologist, pursues this etymological irrelevancy at greater length in the American Anthropologist LII. 564 (Oct.-Dec, 1950). Notable as being among the earliest French references to the Innuit, the terms may be found in Biard's Relation de la Nouvelle-France (1616). Cf. Relations des Jésuites (1858) I. 7/2 “Quelques peuples ont maintenant une implacable guerre contre nous, comme Excomminquoi, qui habitent au costé boreal de grand golfe S. Laurens, et nous font de grands maux.”
7 While insulin itself was discovered by Banting, the name did not originate with his group or researchers, having been used during the preceding 10 years by such investigators as Sehafer of Edinburgh and De Meyer of Belgium, in predictions that diabetes would eventually be controlled by a pancreatic hormone.
8 An historian of the York boat, writing in the Beaver (Mar., 1949, p. 19), observed : No visitor to the West seems to have met the name till Warburton Pike went down the Athabaska in 1889 and reported that “the Inland Boats”, as they are termed, of the HBO were “classified according to shape as York Boats, Sturgeon-heads and Scows.” The citations here given should demonstrate the importance of working with primary sources, whenever possible; fully ten examples of this term may be located in newspapers for each example in books; Tuttle's Our North Land (1885) is perhaps the only book in which Pike's use is antedated.
