beavertail: Canadian name for sugared fried dough confection known in U.S. as funnel cake. Perhaps the dough is piped into the oil in Canada in an intentionally oval shape to look like a beaver's tail? Context heard: reading an online news article about American expats in Canada traveling to Washington to watch the Obama inauguration from the roof of the Canadian Embassy, which is very close to the...

mangia-cake: a derogatory term used by Canadians of Italian descent toward white-bread Anglo Canadians. Read about this one in the Canadian word collection, then heard it last week on TV. A stand-up comedy duo was singing a love song about "my mangia-cake girl" who, along with her family, is completely clueless about the Italian culture of her boyfriend. The Canadian "word lady" says that mangia-cake...

I recently acquired a copy of Only in Canada, You Say , a collection of words that are unique to Canadian English. Here are a few fun terms from recent conversations that I also found in this dictionary. keener: related to student-teacher relations. A student who is a brown-noser, trying to be a teacher's pet. Context in which I heard it: "The students who spend the most time in office hours are...

...Conservative MPs with different positions within the government. Most common question asked: "Why is the prime minister fighting so hard to save his own job instead of acting in the interests of Canadians when so many of their jobs are at risk?" Second most common utterance was not a question, but angry statements about how the Liberals and NDP were "getting in bed with SEPARATISTS (angry emphasis...

In Canada's political and media parlance, I'm not an immigrant. I'm a "new Canadian."