About DCHP-3

Introduction to the Third Edition

The current Third Edition of A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, DCHP-3, is the latest reiteration of a Canadian linguistics project that turned, sometime in the early 1960s, into a Canadian Centennial Project. DCHP-3 is a major technical relaunch of the Second Edition from 2017 (Dollinger & Fee 2017) and a minor editorial update. Last time Paddy Drysdale, the last surviving member of the DCHP-1 editorial board, offered a foreword for DCHP-2; now we must refer the reader to Paddy’s obituary (Dollinger & Neufeldt 2021). While DCHP-2 added roughly 10% to the scope of DCHP-1 (Avis et al. 1967, DCHP-1 Online), DCHP-3 adds around 10% of the update for DCHP-2.

In total, this update includes 136 new entries with 187 meanings (180 Canadian and 7 non-Canadian) for a total of now 12,045 lexemes (11,974 Canadian plus 65 non-Canadian) and 14,586 meanings (14,516 Canadian and 70 non-Canadian), which are illustrated by way of 34,402 quotations (33,994 to illustrate Canadianisms + 408 for Canadian usage of Non-Canadianisms). Work commenced, with the support of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant # 435-2022-0921, in the summer of 2022 and was completed in May 2025. We are grateful that SSHRC made this update and new edition possible.

The Second Edition followed half a century after the First Edition. In dictionary timelines, we had not planned another edition so soon (five years after the second edition), but digital code rot (the Second Edition ran on PhP/MySQL 5.0 code) made an upgrade necessary by spring 2021. We used the opportunity to add some new content. Technically, we opted for a new, mobile-friendly design in Remix that is now hosted on UBC’s own IT infrastructure. Supported by the Department of English Language and Literatures, we are now using our own Canadian servers (see our entry elbows up). The longest entry in the last edition was eh with eleven meanings; in the current edition it is the less dignified shit kicking, with a total of eight meanings, but ding and snowbird are not far behind.

The intended content focus of the present update, which is more of an edition 2.1 than 3.0, was on previously neglected terms connected to minority groups and urban (or rural) slang. This explains the inclusion of Africadian, Epekwitk, kokum, skoden and quinzhee. For the latter four the label ‘Indigenous’ now replaces the older label ‘Aboriginal’, while ‘First Nations’ and ‘Inuit’ continue to be used. Since Canada ratified the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2010, ‘Indigenous’ has been the favoured term, particularly since this declaration involved the participation of Indigenous people from Canada.

Some terms have seen updates from DCHP-1—deke (n.), deke (v.), fire hall, kayak, lahal, line-up, rink rat and snowbird—while some DCHP-2 terms from 2017 required correction and completion. Among the latter, parkade (Considine 2017) is the most prominent case, requiring reclassification as a Type 2 – Preservation from US English (rather than the original Type 1 – Origin in Canada). We hope for more corrections, big or small, preferably in a peer-reviewed context, as were John Considine’s and Victoria Neufeldt’s (Neufeldt 2019), though any critique in any form is most welcome. Other corrections and updates of DCHP-2 terms include bunny hug (which Saskatchewanians will likely be interested to know), bush party, down-island, Fat City, Idle No More, joe job, and qalunaaq.

New terms include those that occur with no obvious connection to Canadian institutions. While a T4 is, in our minds, still an exciting Canadianism, its ties to the Canada Revenue Agency are often perceived as a disqualification by some linguistic colleagues: not “real” language change. We beg to differ, but we are happy to announce that non-institutional language change has also been witnessed in terms such as booter and social (two Manitobanisms), dooryard (a New Brunswickism), the directional terms hang a larry (for turning left) and hang a roger (for turning right), gong show (as a synonym for ‘chaos’), beak ‘to diss someone’ and to be in there like a dirty shirt ‘to really engage in something’. We paid special attention to the informal, as in the de facto Albertanism rig pig ‘oil and gas worker’, shit disturber ‘troublemaker’ and give’r in its two meanings. New Indigenous terms include qajaq, as the decolonized form of kayak (1) (which was updated with an antedating from 1738) and skookumchuck ‘rapids, tidal wave’.

In the more formal registers we can also report new findings. Leadhand ‘foreman, foreworker’ was another exciting discovery of a bona fide Canadianism that no one in the field seems to have had on their radar and that came to us via a graduate student who was working on the side as a landscape gardener. We expect many more words of this type to be awaiting identification and description in Canadian English. Like keener from DCHP-2, some of these newer terms represent an informal layer of the lexicon that, not too long ago, would have been unacceptable for inclusion in a dictionary of English. To ding (v.) (in the sense of ‘to charge someone money unexpectedly’) is one such informal term that was difficult to spot among the many meanings of ding in three word classes. It almost escaped our attention, drowned out in the noise of dings on cars, dinged up noses and criticizing people by dinging them.

Other terms have a clear tie to Canadian settings, such as Surrey Jack, Indo-Canadian, Roxham Road or Fransaskois, plus the many names for Toronto of which we include T-dot, T.O. and the 6ix, in addition to the historical Hogtown. We also extended our attention to other cities: Raincouver, Brollywood and Lotusland (Vancouver), Toontown (Saskatoon), C-Town (Calgary) and E-Town (Edmonton). The Peg (Winnipeg) has been updated from a stub entry in DCHP-1. The list of these ‘citynyms’ would be much longer, as there are many more citynyms in this country.

We have also included some overlooked terms, such as klick (for ‘kilometre’) versus the more universal (and American use) of simply K (initialism). From a time of systematic discrimination against homosexuals, we listed fruit machine, while goal suck ‘someone who wants to score easy goals’ is not just important in hockey but also in other sports.

Other terms show a more sobering part of economic realities today. That they spread out into the world from Vancouver, BC, and Toronto, ON, show the real housing crisis—a term we might have included but which will have to await another edition or update. Demoviction and renoviction are both attested first in Vancouver, which reveals Canada’s leader in this housing crisis.

Digital life is taking over our lives more and more, so it should be of little surprise that Canadian-origin terms, such as enshittification, are going global. Like parka, kayak and visible minority, such Canadian terms may enter the general global lexicon, as caremongering did for a brief period during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The more digital platforms become enshittified, the more likely Cory Doctorow’s claim to fame as a journalist and science fiction writer will be enhanced by the proliferation of this catchy coinage.

We are happy to report that we included levidrome, a term that first gained media attention in 2017, for a new name describing a word that yields another word if spelled backwards (e.g. stop and its levidrome pots). Although little Levi is not so little anymore, his term still warrants inclusion in a dictionary of Canadianisms. Two other newly identified Canadianisms are trick or treat (Type 1 – Origin) and wait time (Type 5 – Frequency), rather than waiting time.

Maplewashing is a more obvious Canadianism, now more properly documented in its five meanings, and supply management makes a showing. Both are easy to spot but now with a historical record. The words peace bond and nothing game are in that regard quite different, as their Canadian dimension is not immediately clear.

Toonie for Terry and the two Michaels have been documented in this edition as well, both with profound Canadian angles. Karen—to be a Karen (or Kevin)—is certainly in use in Canada but not Canadian by our definition. At long last, sentence-initial as well has been added, which is another more elusive Canadian construction. As well, in hospital was added as a prepositional phrase, as in She is recovering in hospital.

DCHP-1 Legacy Content

As in DCHP-2, DCHP-1 legacy data is shown in DCHP-3 on a yellow background with a general disclaimer that it is outdated, as shown below.

Much work remains to be done, however, as our own study on 1,487 meanings in DCHP-1, about 10% of the overall scope, suggests. Of these almost 1,500 meanings our assistant Andrew French considered 831 to be problematic, while 560 were deemed to be priority items. Some of these require revision more than others; however, we hope the disclaimer will continue to make clear that DCHP-1 reflects the prejudices of its time and of its lexicographers.

For new content, we have introduced new labels, such as ‘Systemic discrimination’, which accompanies terms such as Saskatoon freezing deaths, settler-colonial violence or starlight tour. ‘Hiphop’ now graces the entries of the 6ix and T-dot, ‘Media’—capturing media language—in hospital and caremonger, and ‘Colonialism’ terms such as pretendian and settler-colonial violence. For rig pig we used the existing label ‘Mining’ rather than create a new one for the oil and gas industry.

Project Team

The DCHP-3 team was considerably smaller than the last time around. Graduate students Sarah Moar and Tom Playfair assisted in 2022/23 with data collection and drafting. Some terms, e.g. leadhand and Saskatoon freezing deaths, come from their ideas. In 2024/25 undergraduate students Dristi Gounder and Jennifer Dinh assisted with data collection, frequency charts and the occasional drafting task (Dristi for Surrey Jack, Jennifer for quadrex). Volunteer Dasha Martinets drafted the entries T.O. and T-dot, while Serena Klumpenhouwer joined us for sensitivity reading (e.g. Afro-Canadian and Africadian). Associate editor Margery Fee contributed some terms, e.g. zombie fire and bundle buggy, and took on copy editing (as last time), which was topped off by a first round of proofreading. The final proofreading of all new content was conducted this time by Lynn Slobogian, who was also the experienced proofreader behind Creating Canadian English: The Professor, the Mountaineer, and a National Variety of English (Dollinger 2019), which is a ‘biography’ of Canadian English. Chief editor Stefan Dollinger was in charge of all aspects of the project, including drafting, data collection and system testing. The new mobile-friendy presentation and front-end experience was implemented cheerfully and efficiently, as always, by Frank Hangler from Plot + Scatter, with assistance from Kevin Shaw.

Canadian English Dictionary

An exciting development began in 2022, when Editors Canada, the national professional association, approached DCHP-3 to explore options for a new present-day dictionary to replace the outdated Canadian Oxford Dictionary. Soon a national Dictionary Consortium was established, and a chief editor for the Canadian English Dictionary (CED) was found in John Chew. CED has one fascicle completed (Q) and aims to release the entire full-size dictionary and app for 2028.

While Canadian English lexicography was lagging behind at the beginning of both the 19th and the 20th centuries (Considine 2003: 265), the field was in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s for a generation at the cutting edge and breaking new ground (e.g. Avis 1954, 1955; Lovell 1955, 1958). It was a position that we would like to return to, now that DCHP and CED have joined forces, which means that for the first time since the 1960s, when DCHP-1 and the Gage suite of dictionaries (including the Gage Canadian Dictionary) were developed in tandem (Gregg 1993; Dollinger 2019: 34-85), Canadian English is again being explored by two closely integrated lexical research units. One unit, DCHP-3, is carving out the Canadian dimension, meaning by meaning; the other unit, CED and its governing Society for Canadian English, is focussed on producing a dictionary and app that is fully suited to the present needs of professional writers, editors, teachers, educators and students, as well as the general public.

We hope that DCHP-3 will continue to serve the public seeking authoritative information on Canadian words and meanings and their histories. May it trigger many discussions about what is and what is not Canadian in the big ocean of English.

Stefan Dollinger & Margery Fee

Victoria & Vancouver, May 2025

Works Cited

Avis, Walter S. 1967. Introduction. In DCHP-1, xii-xv. Online: www.dchp.ca/dchp1.

Avis, Walter S. 1955. Speech differences along the Ontario-United States border. II: Grammar and syntax. Journal of the Canadian Linguistic Association 1(1, Mar.): 14-19.

Avis, Walter S. 1954. Speech differences along the Ontario-United States border. I: Vocabulary. Journal of the Canadian Linguistic Association 1(1, Oct.): 13-18.

Considine, John. 2017. Parkade: one Canadianism or two Americanisms? American Speech 92(3): 281-297. https://www.academia.edu/129241171/

Considine, John. 2003. Dictionaries of Canadian English. Lexikos 13: 250-270.

DCHP-1 = Avis, Walter S. (ed.-in-chief), Charles Crate, Patrick Drysdale, Douglas Leechman, Matthew H. Scargill and Charles J. Lovell (eds). 1967. A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles. Toronto: Gage.

DCHP-1 Online = Dollinger, Stefan, Laurel Brinton and Margery Fee (eds.) 2013. DCHP-1 Online: A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, 1st edition. Based on Walter S. Avis et al. 1967. www.dchp.ca/DCHP1

DCHP-2 = Dollinger, Stefan (chief editor) and Margery Fee (associate editor). 2017. DCHP-2: The Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, 2nd edition. With the assistance of Baillie Ford, Alexandra Gaylie, and Gabrielle Lim. Vancouver: University of British Columbia. www.dchp.ca/dchp2

Dollinger, Stefan. 2019. Creating Canadian English: The Professor, the Mountaineer, and a National Variety of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://www.academia.edu/35184221/

Dollinger, Stefan. 2016. Googleology as smart lexicography: big, messy data for better regional labels. Dictionaries 37: 60-98. https://www.academia.edu/21904323/

Dollinger, Stefan and Victoria Neufeldt. 2021. Patrick “Paddy” Drysdale (1929–2020). Canadian Journal of Linguistics 66(2): 275-78. https://www.academia.edu/46895718/

Gregg, Robert J. 1993. Canadian English lexicography. In Clarke, Sandra (ed.). Focus on Canada, 27-44. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Lovell, Charles J. 1955. Lexicographic challenges of Canadian English. Journal of the Canadian Linguistic Association 1(1, March): 2-5.

Lovell, Charles J. 1958. A sampling of materials for a dictionary of Canadian English based on historical principles. Journal of the Canadian Linguistic Association (now Canadian Journal of Linguistics) 4/1. 23-32.

Neufeldt, Victoria. 2019. Review of DCHP-2. Dictionaries 40(2): 242-46. https://www.academia.edu/129241047/