DCHP-3

dipper

DCHP-2 (Mar 2016)
n. — Atlantic Canada

any container for berry picking; often a small saucepan or pot.

Type: 3. Semantic Change — OED-3 defines dipper, the object, as 'a utensil for dipping up water' (see OED-3, s.v. "dipper" (5)). In Atlantic Canada, however, dipper may refer to any saucepan or pot-like container, especially one used when berry-picking (DNE, s.v. "dipper"). The semantic generalization of dipper from a pan for dipping up water to any container used to collect berries seems to be special to Newfoundland and PEI. While more common in speech than writing, it has reached the level of a linguistic stereotype. Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism, for instance, exploit this stereotype in a video explaining the term for present-day, spoken Newfoundland English (see NL Tourism "dipper" video).
See also COD-2, s.v. "dipper" (5), which is marked "Cdn (esp. Nfld & PEI)", DNE, s.v. "dipper", DPEIE, s.v. "dipper".

Quotations

1979
And any time I ever got a cough in my life, I went out and skinned the bark off a wild cherry tree and steeped it on the back of the stove. Give it a little bit of water and if it got kind of low, I'd add a little more. I always had a dipper of that on the back of the stove. It was great for a cough.
1987
Aunt Gracie Puddester, as she was fondly known, went across the brook to pick a dipper of berries to make a pudding for supper. This was round two p.m. When her husband and two sons came in from fishing, the pot was on the stove cooking for supper but no sign of "Mother." [...] They found her about two o'clock in the morning on a big rock, five miles away, singing "Jackie Walsh's songs." She had never sang in her life and she couldn't remember anything after she crossed the brook, although, her dipper was full of berries.

References