Dictionaries of Canadian English

Abstract

The lexicographical record of English in Canada began with wordlists of the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. From the beginning of the twentieth century onwards, the general vocabulary of English in Canada has been represented in bilingual and monolingual dictionaries, often adapted from American or British dictionaries. In the 1950s, several important projects were initiated, resulting in the publication of general dictionaries of English in Canada, and of dictionaries of Canadianisms and of the vocabulary of particular regions of Can-ada. This article gives an overview of these dictionaries and of their reception, contextualizing them in the larger picture of the lexicography of Canada's other official language, French, and of a number of its non-official languages. It concludes by looking at the future of English-language lexicography in Canada, and by observing that although it has, at its best, reached a high degree of sophistication, there are still major opportunities waiting to be taken.

keywords: dictionary, lexicography, canadian english, canadianisms, national dictionaries, canadian french, canadian first nations lan-guages, bilingual dictionaries, regional dictionaries, unfinished diction-ary projects