While linguistics is not one of my usual topics, I think this news featuring word use specific to Canada works quite well for a Canada Day posting.
A June 30, 2025 University of British Columbia (UBC) news release (also received via email) includes a ‘Canadianism quiz’ along with the announcement of an updated 3rd (and mobile) edition of the “Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles,”
All your favourite Canadianisms—and 137 new ones—just got easier to find, right in time for Canada Day.
The UBC editors of the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles have released an updated third edition that makes it mobile-friendly for the first time. The technical rebuild was part of the dictionary’s first update since 2017, and only the second since its launch in 1967.
The dictionary now contains more than 14,500 meanings for more than 12,000 words that Canada can rightfully claim. For example, if you live in Raincouver, you’ve probably gotten a booter in your dooryard at some point—although you wouldn’t call it that. Booter is a uniquely Manitoban term for a puddle-soaked foot, and dooryard is what New Brunswickers call their front yard.
Some terms, like puck, have been around since the late 19th century. Indigenous terms like qajaq, much longer. Others, like elbows up, are as fresh as this year’s headlines.
While some Canadianisms originated or are used solely in Canada, others are older terms that faded abroad but still thrive in Canada. Others have a unique meaning in Canada that doesn’t apply in other cultures. And some are simply used much more widely in Canada than anywhere else.
Dr. Stefan Dollinger, a professor in the department of English language and literatures and the dictionary’s chief editor, points to the word ding (to charge someone money unexpectedly) as a good example of the latter.
“The words don’t have to be unique to Canada,” he said. “There may be one guy somewhere in California who says, ‘They dinged me five bucks because I didn’t renew my parking,’ but it’s very common in Canada and very rare in the States. Those are the patterns we’re trying to find.”
Dr. Dollinger and associate editor Dr. Margery Fee, a professor emerita of English, worked for three years with a small team of graduate students, undergraduates and volunteers to investigate potential new entries. They would often start with an anecdote or even a hunch, then trace the term and its meaning through English-language sources to uncover its evolution through time and geography.
It’s a lot of work, but Dr. Dollinger believes the importance of doing it has been underscored lately.
“In this day and age when the Canadian psyche has been a little bit shaken, it’s not a bad idea to remind people that there’s something distinctly Canadian in the tiniest little things, and it’s not random, it’s systematic,” he said. “The way you use language is actually something that’s pretty profound in human experience.”
Dr. Dollinger’s Canadian English Lab is working closely with John Chew, the Toronto editor of an 180,000-word Canadian English Dictionary that is being compiled for publication in 2028. The UBC team will supply the Canadianisms for that project, which will be the first new Canadian dictionary since the second edition of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary 20 years ago.
If you’d like to test your knowledge of the new Canadianisms, try taking the quiz.
There are 13 questions (I got 10 answers right). Hint: You may want to read the excerpt below before attempting the quiz. Enjoy!
For someone who wants to get a little more information before heading off to the dictionary and/or quiz, there’s an eight minute interview by Steven Quinn of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) radio programme, The Early Edition with Dr. Stefan Dollinger. Also, there’s a June 30, 2025 article by Harrison Mooney for The Tyee, Note: Links have been removed,
What makes a word CANADIAN?
Sometimes it’s origin. Words and terms like DEMOVICTION, RENOVICTION and TRICK OR TREAT originated right here in Vancouver; BUNNY HUG, a synonym for hoodie in Saskatchewan, exclusively, appears to have originated there; and though it was named the American Dialect Society’s 2023 word of the year, ENSHITTIFICATION, or digital platform decay, was coined by Canadian tech guru Cory Doctorow. That makes it ours.
Sometimes it’s frequency. Geographical phrases like DOWN ISLAND and UP ISLAND are primarily used along British Columbia’s west coast, when travelling, say, between Nanaimo and Victoria on Vancouver Island. Climate change-related terms like ATMOSPHERIC RIVER, HEAT DOME and ZOMBIE FIRE (a fire that reignites after smouldering underground over the winter) have also achieved widespread use in B.C., as we’ve seen them so recently.
These are two of six types of Canadianisms, according to lexicographer Stefan Dollinger, a professor in the department of English language and literatures at the University of British Columbia. AS WELL, Dollinger serves as chief editor of the newly released third edition of A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, or DCHP-3, considered the definitive collection of words, expressions or meanings distinctive of Canadian English.
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DCHP-3 is a crucial component of a much larger linguistic project: the first full-size dictionary of Canadian English released in more than 20 years, a long-awaited replacement for the outdated Canadian Oxford Dictionary, whose second and final edition was published way back in 2004.
That was at the tail end of what Dollinger calls the Great Canadian Dictionary War of the 1990s, when Oxford University Press came to Canada and cornered the market. They played dirty, according to Dollinger, stoking anti-American sentiment and inflating their collection of Canadian phrases for clout. Winning the war wasn’t lucrative, though. In 2008, after killing its competitors, Oxford closed its offices, fired its lexicographers and left the country. In the decades since, no one has managed to publish a truly comprehensive Canadian dictionary.
If you write for a living, you’ve noticed. Modern spellchecking software relies on U.S. and U.K. dictionaries, creating constant headaches. …
I quite enjoyed Mooney’s June 30, 2025 article and I’m not sure how long the CBC makes items such as the eight minute interview by Quinn available.