Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles

The Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (DCHP) is a historical dictionary of words, expressions, or meanings which are native to Canada or which are distinctively characteristic of Canadian usage though not necessarily exclusive to Canada. The first edition was edited by Walter S. Avis (ed.-in-chief), C. Crate, P. Drysdale, D. Leechman, M. H. Scargill, C. J. Lovell and published in 1967 by W. J. Gage Limited. A second edition is in progress.

The DCHP was published after a period of about 12 years, and had a sizeable collection by C. J. Lovell at its base. W. J. Gage Publishers, the leading dictionary publisher for Canadian English (CanE) dictionaries at the time, contributed to the project (P. Drysdale was employed by Gage). In this way, the first edition (DCHP-1) was the result of both academia and a publishing house. More importantly, however, the academic partner, headed by editor-in-chief Walter S. Avis, were given free hand. The result, despite all monetary constraints and pre-computer editing techniques, was a ground-breaking dictionary in several ways: the DCHP-1 was the first scholarly historical dictionary of a variety of English other than British English (see OED) or American English (DAE, DA) (Dollinger 2006), the two dominant varieties of English throughout the 20th century.

Meanwhile, other varieties of English have become the focus of historical dictionary projects: Australian (Ramson 1988), South African (Silva 1996), and New Zealand (Orsman 1997).

Recently, the DCHP has, after more than 40 years of existence without any updates, attracted considerable attention. Since 2004, Thomson Nelson Ltd., which acquired Gage Ltd. and with it the rights to the DCHP-1, has been actively seeking collaborators in academia to produce a new, fully revised and extended edition of the DCHP-1. This project, DCHP-2, was formally commenced at the University of British Columbia's Department of English in August 2006, after more than a year of preparatory work.

Milestones

Completed in 2011 after automatic scanning and manual proofreading by a team of UBC students under the direction of Stefan Dollinger, DCHP-1 was republished in open access as of 2013, thanks to Nelson Ltd. Access DCHP-1 Online (Dollinger et al. 2013).^[1]

DCHP-2, fully revised and expanded, is expected for 2016 (thanks to a three-year SSHRC Insight Grant, Competition 2012, Insight Grants).^[2]

Notes

References

Cassidy, Frederick G. and Joan Houston Hall (eds.). 1985, 1991, 1996, 2002, in prep. Dictionary of American Regional English. Volumes I–V. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Craigie, William and James R. Hulbert (eds.). 1968 [1938–44]. A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles. 4 volumes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
DA = Dictionary of Americanisms. See Mathews (ed.) 1951.
DAE = A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles. See Craigie and Hulbert (eds.) 1968 [1938–44].
DARE = Dictionary of American Regional English. See Cassidy and Hall (eds.) 1985, 1991, 1996, 2002, in prep.
OED = Oxford English Dictionary
Dollinger, Stefan. 2006. "Towards a fully revised and extended edition of the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (DCHP-2): background, challenges, prospects". HSL/SHL – Historical Sociolinguistics/Sociohistorical Linguistics (Leiden, NL). 6. http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/hsl_shl/DCHP-2/DCHP-2/DCHP-2.htm, 1 Sept. 2006.
Mathews, Mitford M. (ed.). 1951. Dictionary of Americanisms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Orsman, H. W. (ed.). 1997. Dictionary of New Zealand English: A Dictionary of New Zealandisms on Historical Principles. Auckland: Oxford University Press.
Ramson, W. S. et al. (eds.). 1988. Australian National Dictionary. A Dictionary of Australianisms on Historical Principles. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Silva, Penny et al. (eds.). 1996. A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

External links

Official website

Dictionaries of English

Old and Middle English	An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Dict. of Old English Middle English Dictionary

Historic	Edward Phillips' (1658) John Kersey's (1702) Nathan Bailey's (1721) Samuel Johnson's (1755) Noah Webster's (1828) Century (1889–91)

American English	American Heritage Dict. of American English Dict. of American Regional English New Oxford American Oxford American Random House Webster's Webster's New World Webster's Third New International World Book Dictionary

British English	Chambers Collins Oxford English, Concise Oxford English, Shorter Oxford English, Historical Thesaurus, Oxford Dictionary of English Penguin

Canadian English	List of Canadian English dictionaries

Other regions	Australian National Australian Oxford Macquarie

Online	Wiktionary Collaborative International Dict. of English Urban Dictionary Wordnik

Learners / ESL	Cambridge Advanced Learner's Collins COBUILD Advanced Longman Dict. of Contemporary English Macmillan English Dict. for Advanced Learners Merriam-Webster's Advanced Learner's Oxford Advanced Learner's