Funny Canadian Sayings / Quebec Sayings / Canadian Words
Des mots et des expressions québécoises populaires
Saucy cheesecake, in the form of a naughty pin-up painted by George Petty in the late 1940s, adorns our title graphic today, as we look at words common in modern Quebec French including some borrowed from Canadian English.
A Few of Quebec’s Sex Words Une agace-pissette is a Quebec female who dresses provocatively. This expression is a calque (loan-translation) and an equivalent of the English phrase cock-teaser. Agace-pissette means literally on qui taquine pénis ‘one who teases penis.’ Agacer ‘to irritate, to excite in an unpleasant manner’ is synonymous with some meanings of verbs like exciter, provoquer, irriter, piquer. The verb agacer may indicate levels of annoyance well beyond teasing, as in the use below: Tu m’agaces avec ton bavardage! ‘Your blabbing is starting to piss me off.’ The pejorative is sometimes shortened to the slightly more polite but still sexist une agace ‘a tease.’
Un Gino is a show-off stud, a dick-wagger, a macho goof who thinks he was the only creature born on earth with a penis. News flash: he wasn’t. If there is one thing the world no longer needs, it’s another phallocrat (a jerk ruled by his dick). The word Gino is slightly racist, seeing how the Quebec women who made up this term decided to use a common first name of Italian-Canadians and not a Quebec guy name like, well, Guy.
Des fast-foods Un michigan is a hot dog with meat sauce la guédille – A Sherbrooke fast-food delight! Into a normal hot-dog bun, you put french fries and sauerkraut instead of the hot dog. It’s called a moineau in the Lower Saint Lawrence area. le Bas-Saint-Laurent. Le hot-dog stimé ou tosté are those familiar variants, a steamed hot dog or a grilled hot dog.
3 Squares A Day The names of the three daily meals in Quebec differ from their names in France. Le déjeuner is breakfast; le dîner is lunch and le souper is supper. In France, breakfast is le petit déjeuner ; lunch is le déjeuner; early evening dinner is le dîner; late evening meal is le souper.
Quebec Words Borrowed from Canadian English badloqué or in more formal French malchanceux is literally ‘bad-lucked.’ bobépines is what happened to the English phrase bobby pins; standard French is les pinces à chevaux. bosser ‘to boss, to act bossy’ ou se comporter comme si on était le patron is from the English verb to boss, ultimately borrowed into English from Dutch baas ‘master,’ from Middle Dutch baes; akin to Frisian baes ‘ master, foreman, superintendent.’ une broue ‘a brew’ is a beer, in standard continental French, une bière. une cédule is a schedule, in standard French un horaire mon chum is mon ami, mon copain, ‘my friend.’ kiquer is to kick, c’est-à-dire donner un coup de pied. A separate word, also borrowed from English ‘kick’ is found in the Quebec phrase avoir un kick sur ‘to have the hots for.’ Elle a un kick sur mon p’tit frère! ‘She has her eyes on my innocent little brother!’ ouatcher is to watch, in more formal French garder à l'oeil. un perron is a stoop or little veranda. la poque is a hockey puck, to use beside the older Quebec word for hockey puck, namely, la rondelle or la rondelle de hockey. une tabagie is a little Quebec store that sells cigarettes, newspapers and magazines. A general store that also sells food is un dépanneur.
tripper is ‘to trip out.’ In Montréal, if you ask “Le ganje s’amuse?” you could hear this response: ‘Je trippe, Dude.’ vedger is ‘to slack off’ borrowed from English slang reduction ‘to vege’ from to vegetate ‘to sink into a mental state where you acquire the I.Q. of a head of lettuce. Question: “What did you do last night?” Answer: “Veged. Watched 23 back-to-back episodes of 'Get Smart'.” sirop de poteau is a joking Quebec term for cheap sugar syrup. It means ‘syrup from a telephone pole,’ formed on the analogy sirop d'érable ‘maple syrup.’ Et c'est tout pour ça!
Learn Some Quebec Sayings
If you know Canadian or other sayings you would like to share, English ou des expressions québécoises, email them to me. If you want your name listed below the saying as contributor, tell me so in your email. Sayings can also appear anonymously. Any comments, additional word lore or book orders? Please email me at wordguy@shaw.ca
copyright © 2012 William Gordon Casselman
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