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ISBN 1-55278-034-1
224 pages, illustrated
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In this #1 Best-Seller, Bill Casselman delights and startles with word stories from every province and territory of Canada.The names of Lake Huron & Huronia stem from a vicious, racist insult. Check out the story here.
To deke out is a Canadian verb that began as hockey slang, short for to decoy an opponent.
Canada has a fish, the oolichan, that can be lighted at one end and used as a candle.
"Mush! Mush! On, you huskies!" cried Sergeant Preston of The Yukon to 1940s radio listeners, thus introducing a whole generation of Canucks to the word once widely used in the Arctic to spur on sled dogs. Although it might sound like a word from Inuktitut, early French trappers first used it, borrowing the term from the Canadian French command to a horse to go: Marche! Marche! Yes, it's Québécois for giddy-up!
All these and more fascinating terms from Canadian place names, politics, sports, plants and animals, clothing. Everything from Canadian monsters to mottoes is here. Check out entries below and in the pages that follow.
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Independent Book Review from June 2011:
"Operation: Books
a blog about books? they said I was mad
June 13, 2011
Book 43: Casselman's Canadian Words by Bill Casselman, 1995.
This dictionary of Canadianisms (broadly defined: words coined by Canadians, or in Canada, or in reference to Canada, and on the margins a few terms just used in Canada) is certainly one of the more entertaining dictionaries I've read. Casselman wisely decides to display his opinionated and occasionally cranky sarcastic tone throughout, and even when I think he's just being a curmudgeon, this is clearly the right stylistic choice for an amusing educational experience. There's something very pleasing about a national dictionary (the subject of an upcoming MYSTERY ENTRY— place your guesses now!— leaves me a little wary of the implications though), at least in the way that the alphabetical and thematic organization of this work means you get a jumbled sense of Canadian history and geography.
I think it probably points to other 'national' elements, and even some things subtler than the age-old discussion of Canadian place names which all seem to be the most garbled Native words. Instead I found my eye caught by some of Casselman's weirder detours, all ably bolstered by Casselman's impressive lucidity and apparently vast realm of knowledge. For example, sockeye salmon are called that because in Coast Salish 'suk-kegh' means 'red fish,' which I just think is interesting, but there's also the interesting fact that the slur 'redskin' might come from the now-extinct Beothuk and their custom of ceremonially painting themselves red. I don't think that's really a key to understanding anything, but it's a good illustration of the awful tragedy of North American colonization."-------------------------------------
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Visit any page of samples
from Casselman's Canadian Words:
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11
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Scarborough origin of name
Scarborough meaning of name origin
Scarborough
Scarborough means Harelip's Fort, a fact no doubt unknown to Elizabeth Simcoe when she named the Canadian village because the local bluffs reminded her of cliffs near the town of Scarborough in Yorkshire. The wife of Upper Canada's first Governor General John Graves Simcoe needed only to add a knowledge of Old Scandinavian, formerly called Old Norse, to her many accomplishments.Scarborough in England was a Viking settlement originally. We know because it was recorded in a Viking saga that one Thorgils Skarthi founded the North Yorkshire settlement around 965 A.D. Now Viking warriors liked frightening and sometimes repellant nicknames. Skarthi meant harelip in Old Scandinavian. In Old English the settlement became Skaresborg or Harelip's Fort.
Another example of Viking naming habits is found in the origin of the name of the English city of Nottingham. It was first called Snottingsheim, which in Old Scandinavian meant 'farmstead of a Viking named Snot.' Yes, a man was named after nasal mucus. We must suppose the Viking farmer preferred the drippy monosyllable to something longer like Lars T. Runny Nose.
Any comments, additional word lore or book orders?
Please email me at wordguy@shaw.ca
recommended by
Citizenship & Immigration Canada
in their online Citzine.
SAD NOTE: This, my first book, is effectively out-of-print. Not legally out-of-print of course, the publisher hoards a few copies so they can claim the book is still in stock. But you cannot order a copy of the book.
It seems to this author that such unavailability to the trade ought to mean that a book is out-of-print. Not so, according to Canadian publishing laws, which overwhelmingly favour - you guessed it! - publishers, who lobbied for years in Ottawa to get laws supporting publishers' rights over authors rights, 100% of the time.
The Canadian government has always had a simple policy: authors be damned! Let publishers have ten cars and multiple summer homes, but not lowly writers.
If you want a copy of my delightful not-out-of-date book on Canadianisms, look for it online and used.
