Beyond toques and two-fours

March 23, 2017 8:32 PM

The revised second edition of A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles is now available online for all of your Canadian English needs.

A respectful write-up from The New Yorker.
posted by Chrysostom (76 comments total)

I still don't understand how the rest of the English-speaking world manages to communicate properly without "keener" in their vocabulary.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:47 PM on March 23, 2017 [14 favorites]

oh come on, eight-ender isn't a phrase. Someone tell me they've seen a team score eight points in an end and I'll believe it. Until then, I think not.
posted by GuyZero at 8:57 PM on March 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

Nice, mechoui is in there.
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:03 PM on March 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

I've heard people talk about an eight-ender, but it's in much the same way people talk about 29 hands in cribbage -- in a well a friend of a friend saw one once kind of way. It's not a thing that exists so much as a thing that could exist.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:12 PM on March 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

I think there might be some regional variations on 'keener' - I grew up with 'browner', which is actually a pretty ghastly expression when you draw a mental picture.

Oh bravo, they got idiot string! If my mitts didn't have that as a kid, I'd not be typing this with fingers.
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 9:24 PM on March 23, 2017 [8 favorites]

I can confirm the existence of the near-mythical eight-ender. Some friends, just learning to curl, joined our league; a couple of games in they were on the wrong end of one. Photos were taken, it was the talk and wonder of the club.

Sadly their team didn't survive the ignominy of giving up eight, it is a harsh burden to bear.
posted by N-stoff at 9:31 PM on March 23, 2017 [4 favorites]

Yeah, it struck me as being less a hole-in-one and more a situation where a bunch of newbies take on someone who can reliably draw into the house.
posted by GuyZero at 9:38 PM on March 23, 2017

Two-four.
24 beer in a single case; and very much part of my late teens in a small Canadian logging town.
When I moved to Vancouver no one had heard of that term, which says everything about the drinking cultures of said logging town and Vancouver.


And, yes, that is the first thing I looked for.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 9:41 PM on March 23, 2017 [7 favorites]

One of my faves.
posted by higginba at 9:42 PM on March 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

Terrible.

Doesn't have the Shawinigan Handshake.

Incomplete.
posted by Imperfect at 9:43 PM on March 23, 2017 [9 favorites]

For some reason I feel near giddy when I note that the entry for "table" actually contains a table.
posted by el io at 9:49 PM on March 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

My wife pointed out to me over dinner that bylaw and byelection are (largely) Canadianisms. I found that hard to believe at first. They're pretty useful words for their context.

Also, while they do have the BC "skookum", they tragically don't have an entry for the NB slang, to chooch.
posted by bonehead at 10:17 PM on March 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

Considering how often I hear "ten bell" on my hockey podcasts and Canadian radio hockey broadcasts, I'm disappointed it's not an entry.
posted by Lukenlogs at 10:34 PM on March 23, 2017

What is this "fivepin bowling" you have up there? I am only used to candlepins down here in MA.

Ah, here we go. THANKS INTERNET!
posted by not_on_display at 10:52 PM on March 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

"I spilled Vico on my bunnyhug while drinking in the quonset."
- Saskatchewan Phrasebook
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:02 AM on March 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

“garburator,” the Canadian term for a garbage disposal, has a somewhat blurry picture of one in a kitchen sink, with the photo credited to the D.C.H.P.-2’s chief editor.

1. Garburator is one of those words, like "parkade" and "pencil crayon," that for a long time I assumed was common to the US as well as Canada. I was very surprised to find that was not the case.

2. That comment about the photo quality and source is hilarious.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:18 AM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

It's not a two four. It's a twofer. There's a difference.
posted by disclaimer at 2:12 AM on March 24, 2017

No.
posted by furtive at 3:10 AM on March 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

My wife pointed out to me over dinner that bylaw and byelection are (largely) Canadianisms. I found that hard to believe at first. They're pretty useful words for their context.

Britain has 'byelection' (as a word and byelections as, uh, byelections). The US definitely has 'bylaw' as a word, but meaning something slightly different (you can have bylaws made by non-government entities).
posted by hoyland at 3:21 AM on March 24, 2017

And Minnesota has "idiot string," too. Is this dictionary's choices more based on the degree of universality (like, "very few other places say it but all of us do"), or were they really hoping for some other criterion?
posted by wenestvedt at 3:44 AM on March 24, 2017

My fiance (who is American) and I had agree to stop using "table" as a verb, as we were getting terribly confused about what the other person meant. Does he wants to bring it up or postpone the discussion? Aah!

It got so bad that I forgot which was the Canadian meaning. Thanks, DHCP.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 3:44 AM on March 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

wenestvedt , the claim isn't that "idiot string" is exclusively Canadian, but much more Canadian that other Englishes. You can see the prevalence data at the end of the entry.
posted by willF at 4:05 AM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

While we are on the subject, don't forget that Editing Canadian English is now in its third edition.
(When the Freelance Editors Association of Canada presented the manuscript for the first edition to the publisher, the publisher assigned an editor to edit the book that the editors had written about editing.)
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 4:20 AM on March 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

Britain has 'byelection' (as a word and byelections as, uh, byelections). The US definitely has 'bylaw' as a word, but meaning something slightly different

Both also exist in Australia.
posted by acb at 4:48 AM on March 24, 2017

*looks up 'skid'*

Welp, there's no entry for how my husband uses it to mean the neighbourhood rowdies.
posted by Kitteh at 5:34 AM on March 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

Oh, an eight-ender is a thing. In the Glasgow school league circa 1987, I played third in a team that was on the receiving end of one. In our defence, we were crap (curling was a major skive sport, a short amble from the school, and the barman at Crossmyloof would serve booze even to folks in school uniform) and the other team went on to international fame a few years later.

But jeez DCHP, couldn't ya have put the headword in the page title? I popped open 10 tabs, and now my browser a straight line of “DCHP-2  × DCHP-2  × DCHP-2  × DCHP-2  × DCHP-2  ×…”
posted by scruss at 5:40 AM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

jacquilynne: I've heard people talk about an eight-ender, but it's in much the same way people talk about 29 hands in cribbage -- in a well a friend of a friend saw one once kind of way.

This glorious sentence made me understand how people who don't know anything about soccer feel when hearing the game explained by reference to another sport they don't know.

Speaking of not understanding, I had to read the following three times before I could parse it properly:

"giving examples of their use from the (usually) written record"

Sometimes The New Yorker is so dogmatic in its prescriptivism that it ends up pushing the grammatical envelope in new and interesting ways.
posted by Kattullus at 5:51 AM on March 24, 2017

I grew up with the first edition of Mark M. Orkin's Canajan, Eh?, which was a brief list of (English) Canadian phrases.

I've never seen an eight-ender, but I was on a team that gave up a seven-ender and came back to win. People came over from other sheets to look at our rather unusual scoreline.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 6:01 AM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I remain delighted that the Canadian plural of beer is beer.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 6:01 AM on March 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

My wife pointed out to me over dinner that bylaw and byelection are (largely) Canadianisms. I found that hard to believe at first. They're pretty useful words for their context.

They seem to mean that "bylaw" as opposed to "by-law" and "byelection" as opposed to "by-election" are Canadianisms?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:04 AM on March 24, 2017

*looks up 'skid'*

Welp, there's no entry for how my husband uses it to mean the neighbourhood rowdies.

Technically, a skid is a denizen of skid row. So if they're the rowdies of your neighbourhood...
posted by rodlymight at 6:21 AM on March 24, 2017

I still don't understand how the rest of the English-speaking world manages to communicate properly without "keener" in their vocabulary.

We've got "try-hard" down here in the States, and more recently "extra".
posted by Rock Steady at 6:29 AM on March 24, 2017

I've said toque all my life, use it almost every morning in the winter when telling my kids to get ready for school and, when I was living in the US, was genuinely confused to learn that they called them "winter hats."

And yet, still, when I stop, say the word out loud, and really think about it, it always sounds like some pretend word made up explicitly to make us look like provincial rednecks.
posted by 256 at 6:47 AM on March 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

@ kitteh - we definitely said 'skid' to refer to such kids!

There's lots of regional stoner slang that could form it's own dictionary, I think. "Pooched" comes to mind.
posted by elke_wood at 6:59 AM on March 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

"winter hats."

I've heard Americans use the term "beanies" as well which I find... unsettling. Another favorite: Mangia-cake

Skids = neighbourhood rowdies.

It is funny they don't have that meaning of "skid". I had never heard it until I was living in Southern Ontario, so maybe it is regional?
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:03 AM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I remember there was a regional dialect test on Reddit sometime last year that asked you about terms like "stag party" and "road verge" and "soda/pop" and then told you where you lived based on which combination you used. One thing that taught me that many terms that I thought were unique to one region also have surprising pockets of use in other places.

I grew up in Southern Ontario and "skid" was in common usage (meaning both an unsavoury person (particularly a teenager) and also a wooden loading pallet). I always thought that the former was universal (in Canada/US) and the latter regional, but I'm sure the map for both is rather patchwork across both Canada and the US.
posted by 256 at 7:09 AM on March 24, 2017

Another confusion I had coming down South and into English was the racial pejorative "square head". Around here it is specifically labelled at Germans. Whereas for me squarehead, or more correctly tête carrée meant English people (often more broadly anyone who speaks only English). One of my wife's older Russian Mennonite uncles used the term once while telling a story about his childhood in rural Manitoba. I laughed and told him in French we'd call all of you squareheads pointing out that as a Russian Mennonite he had way more in common with a German speaker then I had with him. He was nonplussed.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:22 AM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Another favorite: Mangia-cake

And yet they omit the derivative "caker", which is what I hear more often in Ontario.
posted by Kabanos at 7:36 AM on March 24, 2017

I grew up in Southern Ontario and "skid" was in common usage (meaning both an unsavoury person (particularly a teenager) and also a wooden loading pallet).

FWIW, I worked in the transportation industry with folks across the US and Canada, and I heard skid and pallet used pretty interchangeably.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:46 AM on March 24, 2017

At any rate, this dictionary will make for good reading when I'm kicking back with a stubby and a bowl of Kraft Dinner in my Muskoka chair at the cottage on May Two Four.
posted by Kabanos at 7:51 AM on March 24, 2017

It's not a two four. It's a twofer. There's a difference.

Nope. Not in small town BC. Both words are pronounced distinctively, with equal emphasis.

See:

"Holy fuck, Jake, I was fuckin' hammered last night! I drank a whole fucking two-four!"
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 7:54 AM on March 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

I've never heard anyone pronounce two-four as twofer. Those are two different things.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:05 AM on March 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Yeah, and twofer (pronounced "toofer") is in use separately to refer to a 2-for-1 deal, a usage which I believe is also common in the US.

I do occasionally see people online insisting that two-four, as in beer, is pronounced "toofer," but that must be particularly regional if true, because I've never heard anyone pronounce it that way despite having discussed the purchase and consumption of two-fours many (too many) times across Canada.
posted by 256 at 8:08 AM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Another favorite: Mangia-cake

That entry has this testimony: I was 10 years old when first introduced to the culinary exotica of a grilled cheese sandwich. Defying my mother's "NO," I'd gone home for lunch with a mangiacake classmate, intrigued from the very point of crossing the threshold by how "English" people lived. Their houses smelled different. Dogs lived inside.

In Canada, don't most dogs live inside? At least part of the time? Or are Canadian doghouses that sturdy and well-insulated?
posted by furtive_jackanapes at 8:11 AM on March 24, 2017

So a 2-for-1 deal on beer would be a "Two-Four Twofer". Though such a situation would never be allowed in any Canadian retail store.
posted by Kabanos at 8:15 AM on March 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

In Canada, don't most dogs live inside? At least part of the time? Or are Canadian doghouses that sturdy and well-insulated?

It's probably more in reference to old-school first-generation Italian-Canadians (or any Europeans really) preferring not to keep animals in the house.
posted by Kabanos at 8:17 AM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I was called a keener in my first week when I got a job in Canada and was totally flummoxed. It sounds like it should be a compliment.
posted by TheLateGreatAbrahamLincoln at 8:22 AM on March 24, 2017

My wife grew up in Vancouver and introduced me to the term "ginch", meaning underwear, which I'd never heard in Ontario. Sad to see it doesn't have its own entry, but is quoted multiple times in the entries for "gotchies" which has made me a better informed person on how loaner words move from Eastern Europe, to Ontario, and then head West, much like the skivvies of our forefathers.
posted by Paid In Full at 8:29 AM on March 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

Two-four.
24 beer in a single case; and very much part of my late teens in a small Canadian logging town.
When I moved to Vancouver no one had heard of that term, which says everything about the drinking cultures of said logging town and Vancouver.

Funny because I grew up in the Lower Mainland and we used "two-four" to refer to a 750mL bottle of hard alcohol (or malt liquor, like a two-four of OE/Old English). It was the size above 375mL/a mickey.
posted by urbanlenny at 9:15 AM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

And in Newfoundland, a the only mickies I've ever heard of are the mouse and the ginormous bottles of rum at the liquor store , but they're usually called Texas mickies. A 375ml bottle of alcohol is a flask and the next size up is a bottle or twenty-sixer.
posted by peppermind at 9:25 AM on March 24, 2017

I guess we're all happy with this link, then. Eh?
posted by BlueHorse at 9:27 AM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

I almost only ever hear "twofer" used as a sexual innuendo, so I'd advise against asking for one at The Beer Store™/LC/whatever, unless what you're actually looking for is the limits of Canadian politeness. Like "how about a twofer" is the sort of thing a creep shouts out of a car window at two women on the sidewalk.

I vaguely recall there being a commercial in the 80s that made fun of a character's mispronounciation of "Two-four Blue". One of the ones with the Russian caricature maybe? Or am I thinking of the "half a bottle of Molson Golden" shtick?
posted by rodlymight at 9:30 AM on March 24, 2017

"half a bottle of Molson Golden"

I believe you mean "Molson Golson"
posted by GuyZero at 9:47 AM on March 24, 2017 [4 favorites]

Molson Golson
posted by Kabanos at 9:50 AM on March 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

Missing "shit disturber".
posted by howling fantods at 9:55 AM on March 24, 2017 [3 favorites]

the next size up is a bottle or twenty-sixer.

Oh wait a minute, you're right! The 750mL was referred to as a two-six or twenty sixer, not a two four! I was misremembering. That also explains why 750mL is over 25 fluid ounces, which I thought a strange rounding.
posted by urbanlenny at 9:58 AM on March 24, 2017

Shit-disturber is Canadian?

Again, I have to ask, how is the rest of the world making themselves understood without this entirely necessary term?
posted by jacquilynne at 10:07 AM on March 24, 2017 [11 favorites]

A few missing entries from Quebec:

1) "gino", a pejorative term meaning the same thing that "guido" does in the U.S. (think Jersey Shore stereotypes). Feminine form is usually "ginette", not "gina".

2) "terrace" (pronounced in the French way, "tur-ASS" not "TEAR-us"), meaning "any outdoor seating area of a restaurant, cafe, club, etc..."

Also, if you really want to capture that Quebec accent, you drop the "-ed" when pronouncing "all-dressed", e.g. "all-dress pizza".
posted by mhum at 12:10 PM on March 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

"Gino" was used in Ontario as well with varying degrees of affection and offensiveness.
posted by GuyZero at 12:41 PM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

In the GTA, we just call them "people from Woodbridge." It takes more syllables, but it seems plausibly less offensive.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:44 PM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

In my experience, a "skid" refers to the unsavoury marks left in your gitch after a two-four and poutine.
posted by Pablo MacWilliams at 2:56 PM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

*looks up "rip" on DCHP*

n.

a stretch of ruffled water caused by such an obstruction; the place where such an obstruction is.

Hm.

There's a definition they didn't include, overheard in the north of Ontario up Thunder Bay way that I would suggest as a valid entry:

Rip - n. To go for a ride on one's snowmobile, usually at a high rate of speed. Ex. "We're goin' out for a rip, eh? Be back in a couple hours."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:57 PM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

So, now I understand why Waldo was wearing red and white and always was smiling and waving all friendly like - he's Canadian!
posted by Nanukthedog at 3:05 PM on March 24, 2017

So, now I understand why Waldo was wearing red and white and always was smiling and waving all friendly like - he's Canadian!

Canadians - they walk among us.
posted by GuyZero at 3:29 PM on March 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

24/two-four: Vancouver

Growing up, we'd call a cardboard tray of 24 cans a 'flat' or a two-four. I think that a 24 case of beer in bottles is kind of rare around here.

Twixer on the other hand is a degeneration of 26 ounces (750mL) that hard liquor is available in.

Confusingly, 'mickey' can refer to a 12 ounce (375ml) bottle of liquor, or refer to Mickey's brand of malt liquor that came in stubbies/hand-grenade bottles.

A '40' is a 1.14L bottle of hard liquor.

A 'handle' is a 1.4L bottle of hard liquor.

Yeah, the Imperial/metric conversion is rather loose.

Skid: I recall that in the late 80's. I think it morphed into 'scab' in the 90's/00's. A millennial I know who growing up in Surrey (neighbouring city to 'couver) still uses 'scab.'
posted by porpoise at 3:33 PM on March 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's worth knowing, mandolin conspiracy, that snowmobiles are not a vital component of going out for a rip. Pretty much any motorized vehicle will do. 4-wheelers and pick up trucks are popular.
posted by 256 at 3:44 PM on March 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Sorry - rips aren't snowmobile-specific. Let the record show this definition includes any off-road capable vehicle.

Sorry for the oversight.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:20 PM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Going out for a rip, previously
posted by btfreek at 5:31 PM on March 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Douglas Coupland published 2 volumes of these 13 years ago.
posted by brujita at 8:06 PM on March 24, 2017

I often found the subtle things the most noticeable, e.g. saying "turn at the lights" instead of "light", which seems far more reasonable. It also took me a few years of working in a bar in Toronto before someone explained why a patron calling another guy a "goof" was really offensive.
posted by transient at 9:18 PM on March 24, 2017

This thread was worth it for the Molsen Golden commercial with the CBC bumper.

Thanks Kabanos.
posted by jonnay at 7:52 AM on March 25, 2017

Vancouver: Growing up, we'd call a cardboard tray of 24 cans a 'flat' or a two-four. I think that a 24 case of beer in bottles is kind of rare around here.

As one who has lived in both Ontario and BC, Vancouverites don't use two-four the same way Ontarians do. A two-four to a guy from Hamilton means specifically the card-board box of beer with 24 12-oz units in it. When I was a kid, this always and forever meant glass bottles, but now can also mean a cardboard box containing two dozen cans.

In Vancouver, a flat canonically meant four 6-packs of cans, typically each half-dozen packed with plastic rings. It would be contained on a quarter-height cardboard tray. I don't recall seeing many cardboard crates of 24 bottles in BC.

In Ontario, one would call that simply four six-packs and would be the price of 4 six-pack units. Significantly, a two four would be sold as a single thing and very likely a few bucks cheaper. Thus their popularity---a two four is the cheapest way to buy beer retail in ON.
posted by bonehead at 9:55 AM on March 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

In Canada, don't most dogs live inside?

In cities, yes. On farms, 50/50. Mostly sorted by the age of the owners.
posted by bonehead at 9:58 AM on March 27, 2017

I'm not actually sure that two-fours of bottles even existed in BC. They might be a product of the Beer Store. In the (admittedly very small) liquor store I worked in, we sold 6-packs, cases and flats. A flat was, as you noted, 4 6-packs of cans, but they were actually cheaper than separately buying 4 6-packs. A case was the only way we sold bottles, and it was 12, not 24.

I'm not saying there was no place you could be a two-four of bottles in BC, but I don't recall ever having seen one, including while working in a liquor store.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:01 AM on March 27, 2017

A case in Ontario is ambiguous, but usually means a dozen bottles as well.

I do recall walking into a store in BC and asking for a two four of bottles and getting blank looks. I also remember grumbling about having to pay 6-pack prices for flats a lot of the time.
posted by bonehead at 10:09 AM on March 27, 2017

Interesting. In the U.S. (universally, in my experience at least) a case is 24 units, either cans or bottles. Twelve units is a twelve-pack, six is a six-pack. A six-pack of bottles would be in the little cardboard holder, cans would be in the plastic yoke.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:35 AM on March 27, 2017