Terms and Quotes

The terms included in Words of Wolfe Island were selected from the Wolfe Island English Corpus (WIEC). The selection criterion was simply that a word or phrase seemed interesting to someone on the project team. Reasons could be because the term is associated with the Island or area (the Crack, winter ferry), is an older term falling out of use (yokel, hit parade), is historic (rum runner, Barnardo children), is associated with a trade or industry (whistlepunk, sea time), is characteristic of a regional dialect (somewheres, a ways), is attributed to a particular variety of English (pup, nevermind) or is a Canadianism (twenty-sixer, scribbler).

This website is not intended to suggest that Wolfe Island has its own vocabulary or that everyone on the Island uses each of these terms. In some cases, it is possible that an unusual term reflects a unique pronunciation or use by one individual (despite an attempt to avoid such cases). On the other hand, there are no doubt many interesting terms used on the Island that are not included on this website, simply because they did not come up during the interviews and therefore do not appear in WIEC.

The quotes on each page display the key word or phrase in context. All quotes are excerpts from WIEC. Most are verbatim, but in some cases hesitations were cleaned up or a phrase was omitted (and replaced with an ellipsis) for ease of reading. In other cases, details were removed or altered in order to protect anonymity. All names, unless a matter of historical record, are pseudonyms.

Some quotes include dialogue, which usually captures two interviewees interacting. Content from interviewers is not included unless it helps to clarify the context of a quote.

Some pages contain a single quote and others have multiple quotes. The quotes included are not necessarily exhaustive for a term in WIEC. Some possible quotes have been excluded because they are confusing, the subject matter is sensitive or there are simply more examples for a particular word than could be reasonably included.