ISBN 1-55278-034-1

224 pages, illustrated

published by McArthur & Company

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visit any page of samples

from Casselman's Canadian Words:

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11

 

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.

 

NEXT CANADIAN WORD

 

recommended by

Citizenship & Immigration Canada

in their online Citzine.

Check it out.

 

 

SELECT SAMPLES FROM OTHER WORD BOOKS

HOME

 

 

 

© 1996-2007 William Gordon Casselman