Two decades after the last dictionary of Canadian English was published, work is finally underway on a new Canadian dictionary. 

Editors Canada announced in February that the professional organization has partnered with Nelson Education to use the Nelson Gage Canadian Paperback Dictionary as the foundation for a new Canadian English dictionary.

Oxford University Press, which entered the Canadian dictionary market in 1998, published the  second edition of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary in 2004 (and then shuttered its dictionary division in 2008). Since then, no publisher has updated or printed a new edition of a Canadian dictionary, which means that editors are relying on a reference book that was published the year Shrek 2 hit the big screen, as editor Emma Skagen pointed out in 2021. 

The first edition of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, helmed by Katherine Barber as editor-in-chief, received a rave review in Q&Q, sold 200,000 copies, and was a Globe and Mail bestseller for more than a year. It became the standard for most Canadian editors and publishing houses. But it was only one of a handful of full-length Canadian dictionaries from a variety of scholarly publishers. An earlier edition of a different Canadian dictionary, the 1996 Nelson Canadian Dictionary of the English Language, received a starred Q&Q review. 

Editors Canada has been investigating ways of remedying the lack of an up-to-date reference volume since 2011, and in 2022 established a team to take on the project. Polyglot John Chew, a software developer by trade, is the editor-in-chief of the new dictionary. His keen interest in dictionaries – and in the Canadian English dictionary project – is informed by his role as head of the North American Scrabble Players Association.

Building a new dictionary, even from the foundations of an existing one, is a labour-intensive process, and Chew says it will optimistically take about five years to complete. But to give Canadian editors, writers, and wordsmiths a look at what they can expect to find, Chew and his team will be releasing a portion of the dictionary later this year as a test sample. 

The letter Q, a small portion of which is online now as a public demo, could be released in its entirety as early as this summer, Chew says. 

Lexicographers typically start with M, as it is the mid-point of the English alphabet, but Chew was concerned that M had too many words and would take too long to complete. He turned to Q, a favourite letter of Scrabble players. For speakers of Canadian English, Q has a lot to offer – it includes Indigenous and Inuktitut words, royalty-related Canadianisms, as well as a selection of medical and scientific words, Chew says. (We have to admit to a certain partiality to the letter here at Q&Q.)

Chew leads a small team of about a dozen volunteers working on the project, which is operating with other partner organizations – the UBC Canadian English Lab, the Queen’s University’s Strathy Language Unit, and the master of digital media program at Toronto Metropolitan University. 

The Canadian English Dictionary will be incorporated as a nonprofit organization separate from Editors Canada, a process Chew expects will take place this fiscal quarter. The project is currently operating on seed funding from UBC and Editors Canada, and volunteer and in-kind contributions from UBC, Queen’s, TMU, Editors Canada, and several individuals. After incorporation, Chew expects that funding sources for the project will grow to include private donations, government grants, ad revenues, and subscription access to premium features. Volunteer fundraisers have been working for the past year on grant applications and plans to secure private donations.

Stefan Dollinger, a lexicographer at UBC who spent 11 years updating A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, a historical dictionary of words that are particular to Canadian English that was first published in 1967, leads the UBC language lab. The lab is currently at work on another update of the historical dictionary. His group is feeding their work on Canadianisms, including expressions such as “in there like a dirty shirt,” to the Canadian dictionary team.

Dollinger stresses that updating the Canadian dictionary is important to assert the unique English spoken in Canada. Despite our proximity to the U.S. and our relationship with England, there are some words that are unique to Canadian English, such as running shoe, T4, and toque. 

“It’s an expression of Canadian identity, and I think in this age with big data and globalization, it would be foolish not to go for this,” Dollinger says. A new and updated Canadian English Dictionary will be an important “bit of linguistic resistance to the big pools of homogenization of English.”

Chew says the plan is to release an online edition of the whole dictionary first, then potentially pare it down for a print edition. Completion of the entire dictionary will take years, but Chew says the team will have a better sense of it once they finish Q. 

Regardless of when it is completed, Chew is confident it will be a well-considered, high-quality dictionary.

“Because we’re working with the editors association, I think this will be the finest copy-edited and proofread dictionary ever produced,” Chew says. “We’ll have no trouble meeting the COD’s standards for accuracy.”