Elbows up, cashspiel, kokum: new Canadian terms enter the Oxford English Dictionary

Elbows up, cashspiel, kokum: new Canadian terms enter the Oxford English Dictionary

Kitty-corner, land acknowledgement, point form also included on list of new entries.

If you're sitting kitty-corner to some hoser at a cashspiel while eating your kokum's world-famous blueberry grunt — it’s probably going to turn into an elbows-up affair.

And if you need some help translating that sentence, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has just added seven new entries from Canadian English.

Here is the full point form list:

The OED uses several methods to track the emergence of new words in English. Sometimes, new words are crowdsourced. Other times, they come from scholars who study how English is used in Canada. The OED also uses software to track the frequency of words in different parts of the world.

So it's no surprise "elbows up" was one of the phrases added this year.

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"It's been really fun working on this batch," said Danica Salazar, world English editor at the OED. "Canada has been showing a lot of soft power especially in the past year with the Elbows Up movement and Heated Rivalry. Canada has been on everyone's mind."

With these new words joining the broader lexicon, it's possible other English speakers will see Canadians a little bit more like we see ourselves.

Canada's English dictionary hasn't been updated in almost 2 decades. What does that say about us?

"The stereotypical idea of Canadians is that you're quite polite and … tend to be quite apologetic and self-effacing," said Salazar. But with elbows up being known more widely, she says people are seeing a new dimension to Canadians. "You fight when you do need to fight… You're far from being doormats."

Salazar said it's natural for English to absorb influences from other languages it contacts.

"So, naturally, Canada being a place where there's a lot of influence from Indigenous cultures, it's expected that some of these additional words also make their way into general Canadian vocabulary."

The Cree word kokum, she said, is an example of that process.

What does the rest of the world call 'point form'?

Bullet points is the more common term, which we also use. The Canadian "point form" is apparently a rare, more versatile alternative.

Salazar said she had never heard of the term point form before, even though she has some family that lives in Canada.

Now she plans to introduce it into her own vernacular because it can also be used as an adjective. "I think it's really useful."

Helen Surgenor is a producer for CBC News based in Toronto, currently working for the entertainment unit. She spent years waking up before dawn to make the daily news podcast World Report. She has reported in Alberta, Iqaluit and Barbados. You can reach her at helen.surgenor@cbc.ca.