DCHP-3

Quebecoise

DCHP-2 (Apr 2016)

Spelling variants:
Québécoise

n. — especially Quebec

a francophone woman from Quebec.

Type: 1. Origin — Québécoise is a lexical transfer from Quebec French. In Canadian English, a woman from Quebec may also be referred to as a Quebecker, which can refer to either gender. The use of the term Quebecoise, which is occasionally but not generally written with the French accents as Québécoise, is more respectful or culturally appropriate, as it anglicizes a term already used for self-identification by francophone women in Quebec (see the 2013 quotation).
See also COD-2, s.v. "Québécoise", which is marked "Cdn", and ITP Nelson, s.v. "Québécoise", which is described as "Quebec".

Quotations

1936
Born in what province, my pretty maid? As we toured in Quebec kind sir, she said, sir she said. So you're a Quebecoise, my pretty maid? But baptised in Ontario, sir, she said, sir she said.
1956
"Before long," said Mr. Justice Stewart, "Cech apparently fell in love with the country and a fair Quebecoise. He then applied to land and remain as an immigrant."
1966
"I have come back to my land," she writes, "more Quebecoise than Canadienne, because I have learned harshly, with pain and anguish, that to remain true to my past, to my culture, to my language... I must live in Quebec, in a Quebec that one day may yet become my country."
1975
Mr. Yanda explained how he once went looking for an album by Quebecoise Monique Leyrac, and every store he went to said, "We don't have it.; let's look in the foreign section."
1985
But Gutwillig is sending them a bit of pure Montreal: a love story about a young Jewish guy who meets a Quebecoise while eating what else a special at Wilensky's.
1998
"She's not Québécoise; she's Belgian," a stone-faced Dufresne reiterated repeatedly on her return to Quebec.
2001
Lewis somehow actually looks like a Quebecoise -- but can she pull the accent off when others before her, from Rosanna Arquette to even Sir Laurence Olivier himself (The 49th Parallel), had difficulty?
2013
Many people will remember a day when people from Quebec were called French Canadian but following the Quiet Revolution there was a shift in the language used for self-identification and the terms Quebecois and Quebecoise were introduced. There are, at least, two important points to note about these terms. First, they are gender specific and both terms are often used in the same sentence to describe the citizens of Quebec. "Les Quebecois and les Quebecoise..." identifies both male and female members of society and does not assume that the masculine includes the feminine. This is not just a measure of a language that has feminine and masculine articles for each object; it is also a political statement about equality.
2016
Charles Larroque mastered French in Quebec. He visited around the 1976 Olympics; married a Quebecoise; wound up spending a decade; and returned home to teach.

References

  • COD-2
  • ITP Nelson