Citations:Canuck

English citations of Canuck

Noun

					1835 1849 1855 1860 1861 1872 1887 1889	1900 1904 1907 1912 1956 1963 1964
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1835, w:Henry Cook Todd, Notes Upon Canada and the United States, p 92:

  Jonathan distinguishes a Dutch or a French Canadian, by the term Kanuk.

• 1849, James Edward Alexander, L'Acadie; or, Seven Years' Explorations in British America, v 1, London: Henry Colburn, pp 272–3:

  We saw a few partridges: we also met a lusty fellow in a forest road with a keg of whisky slung round him, who called to us ‘Come boys and have some grog, I'm what you call a canuck:’ a (Canadian).

• 1855, “A Ramble in October”, in The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, v 45, p 341:

  So, giving our donkey into the keeping of a lively Canuck, whom we found at the Red-House, hard-by, we commenced the slow ascent by a side-path that at this point winds out of the common road.

• 1860, w:Josiah Gilbert Holland, Miss Gilbert's Career: An American Story, p 25:

  I'll sit here and blow till he comes round with his old go-cart, and then I'll hang on to the tail of it, and try legs with that little Kanuck of his.

• 1861, B. Davies, “On the Origin of the name ‘Canada’”, in The Canadian Naturalist and Geologist, v 6, Montreal: B. Dawson & Son, p 431:

  And this is the explanation which appears now to find most favour; and though not satisfied with it myself, I must add that it is somewhat supported—as it has struck me—by the analogy of another term, namely Canuc, which is used vulgarly and rather contemptuously for Canadian, and which seems to me to come from Canuchsha, the word employed by the Iroquois to denote a ‘hut’ (see Arch. Americana, vol. ii. p. 322). Here a Canadian would mean a ‘townsman’ or ‘villager’, but a canuc would be only a ‘hutter’.

• 1872, Maximilian Schele De Vere, Americanisms: The English of the New World, New York: Charles Scribner & Co., p 589:

  Canacks, Canucks, and even K'nucks, are slang terms by which the Canadians are known in the United States and among themselves.

• 1887: Grip [Toronto], 19 February, p 3:

  Who'll buy my caller herrin'? / Cod, turbot, ling, delicious herrin', / Buy my caller herrin', / They're every one Kanucks!

• 1889, John G. Donkin, Trooper and Redskin in the Far North-West: Recollections of Life in the North-West Mounted Police, Canada, 1884-1888, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, p 148:

  It is a pity these Canadian militiamen spoilt the good work they had done by never-failing bluster. But for pure and unadulterated brag I will back the lower-class Canuck against the world. The Yankee is a very sucking dove compared to his northern neighbour.

• 1900, North American Notes & Queries, July, p 64:

  I would very much like to know the origin of the expression Canuck applied to the French Canadians.

• 1904, w:Holman Francis Day, “Song of the Men o' the Ax: Verse Stories of the Plain Folk Who Are Keeping Bright the Old Home Fires Up in Maine”, in Kin o' Ktaadn, p 145:

  On the deacon-seat in the leapin' heat / With the corn-cobs drawin' cool and sweet, / And timin' the fiddle with tunkin' feet, / A hundred men and a chorus. / “Roule, roulant, ma boule roulant,” / all Canuck but a good song; / Lift it up then, good and strong, / for a cozy night's before us.

• 1907, Howard Angus Kennedy, New Canada and the New Canadians, Howard Marshall, p 192:

  “And don't you want to be Americans any longer?” I asked. “No,” said they most emphatically, “we're Canucks now.”

• 1912, Vingie E. Roe, The Maid of the Whispering Hills, p 39:

  On the face of the swarthy Canuck guide who sat in the stern there was a weary contempt.

• 1956, Herbert Gold, The Man who Was Not with it, p 249:

  So Mama will say, Bon jour, Grack, tu viens enfin? That's Canuck for you ain't been a son to your ma. Can't you see by my skin and bones — I'm sick, I got a habit — I ain't my mama's anymore?

• 1963, Citizen [North Vancouver], May 12, p 30:

  What is the origin of the nickname Jack Canuck? It probably comes from the name Connaught, the nickname given more than 100 years ago by French Canadians to Canadians of Irish origin.

• 1964, Calgary Herald, March 19, p 18:

  The Scottish skip missed a wide open takeout in the fifth leaving the Canucks another single.

Adjective

					1887	1963
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1887, Grip [Toronto], 5 March, pp 1–2:

  Well, what do you think of the Canuck elections?

• 1963, Globe and Mail [Toronto], February 2, p 6:

  Any trend by the big brother to the south to tell Canadians how to run their affairs can raise Canuck dander very quickly.