Chesterfield: not quite dead

The cockles of my little Canadian heart were warmed this week when I read that the Crime Writers of Canada 2020 Arthur Ellis Prize has been awarded to 58-year-old Albertan author Wayne Arthurson's The Red Chesterfield, which features a severed foot found in an abandoned sofa. Coincidentally, I had just seen another mention of "chesterfield" in a novel by 62-year-old Nova Scotian Anne Emery the night before. (This is called the first law of lexicography: just when you think a word might not exist, you read it in the paper or hear it on TV.)

For decades in the 20th century, "chesterfield" was a shibboleth of Canadian English. Canadians, and only Canadians, called a multi-seated upholstered piece of furniture a chesterfield rather than a couch or a sofa.

In other varieties of English, a chesterfield is a specific kind of sofa, the kind you might find in smoky gentlemen's clubs, upholstered in tufted leather, with the back and the arms of the same height.

But starting in the early years of the 20th century, Canadians started to apply the word generically to any kind of sofa. There were scatterings of this usage in the US but they faded away. In Canada, "chesterfield" had its heyday through the 1970s, but started to wane, until by the 1990s, fewer than 10% of Torontonians in their twenties were saying "chesterfield", having abandoned it in favour of "couch".

I grew up calling this piece of furniture a chesterfield, but shifted to "sofa", sometime in the eighties, which seems to have been "peak sofa" time in North America. I do use "couch" occasionally. But "sofa", too, has lost the battle to "couch" with most North Americans, although it is still the preferred term for the British.

But "chesterfield" is not yet dead, especially outside Toronto, witness the two authors I have mentioned, who though not spring chickens, are not really old either (I may be a bit biased in this assessment). Where they live is also significant. Searches in Canadian newspapers for the last three years turned up a few dozen chesterfields (fortunately not including severed feet) in the Prairies, BC, and Atlantic Canada. They were, however, vastly outnumbered by couches (over 20,000 hits) and, struggling along, sofas (5,800 hits).

If you're a Canadian, what do you call this item of furniture? Have you ever called it a "chesterfield"? And if so, how old are you and what part of the country are you from? I would love to keep "chesterfield" alive, but I fear it is doomed. The language evolves organically and there is little we can do to change it.

A bit of etymology for these three words:

Sofa ultimately goes back to Arabic ṣoffah, a slightly raised platform covered with carpet and cushions, on which people could sit or recline. It was applied to what we know as a sofa in the 1700s.

Chesterfields are named for one of the 19th-century Earls of Chesterfield.

Couch comes from French coucher, a typical squishing-down of  Latin collocāre to lay in its place, from  com- together + locāre to place.

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Tactical or strategic? Canadianism alert

With the UK election imminent, my Facebook feed is filling up with posts about "tactical voting". 

For those of you who don't live in a first-past-the-post parliamentary system, this is what "tactical voting" is:

tactical voting Politics the practice of transferring electoral allegiance for tactical purposes, esp. in the hope of denying victory to a third party; also tactical vote, tactical voter.

1974   M. Steed in D. Butler & D. Kavanagh Brit. Gen. Election Feb. 1974 317   Some people who would have voted Labour, had they lived in an average constituency with a full choice of parties, voted Liberal or SNP where a Labour candidate had little or no chance of winning. Thus the theory is one of tactical voting. -- Oxford English Dictionary

So, for instance, if you normally vote Liberal but the Liberal candidate doesn't have a hope of winning in your constituency, you might choose to vote (in Canada) NDP to make sure the Conservative candidate doesn't win, so that the Conservatives won't win enough seats to form a government.

BUT! If you're Canadian, by now you're thinking, "Wait a minute, we don't call that tactical voting, we call it strategic voting". 

Indeed we do. The term "strategic voting" (or "vote strategically") is overwhelmingly Canadian, and has been with us since at least the 1970s.

Both these words come ultimately from Greek:

tactic from Greek taktos ‘ordered, arranged’

strategic from Greek, from stratēgos "general" from stratos ‘army’+ agein ‘to lead’

Although military specialists will tell you that there is a difference between strategy and tactics, the first being

The art or practice of planning or directing the larger movements or long-term objectives of a battle, military campaign, etc. Often distinguished from tactics, considered as the art of directing forces engaged in action or in the immediate presence of the enemy. -- Oxford English Dictionary

 in general usage, the two words overlap. 

Or perhaps Canadians are taking a more long-term view at the ballot box whereas the British feel themselves to be "in the immediate presence of the enemy". 

Did you miss last week's post? It's a fun one, about how wacky English spelling is. You can find it here: https://katherinebarber.blogspot.com/2019/12/how-wacky-is-english-spelling.html

Photo by Elliott Stallion on Unsplash

Dangerous offenders

"Murderer declared dangerous offender," the headline reads.

Well, DUH! you may think.

Unless you're Canadian.

In Canadian English "dangerous offender" is a legal term with a specific meaning (not just an offender who happens to be dangerous):

a person who has been convicted of a serious personal injury offence and constitutes a threat to the life, safety, or physical or mental well-being of others, and whose history suggests little hope of reform, who is imprisoned indefinitely.

This classification has existed since the late 1960s in Canada.

A recent headline in The Globe and Mail would no doubt cause some puzzlement to non-Canadians:

Saskatchewan man who beat woman, set her on fire not dangerous offender: judge

In fact the decision in this gruesome case probably also caused some puzzlement to many Canadians, but not so much of the linguistic kind.

Since 2003, British law has also had a "dangerous offender" classification, with a somewhat different definition:

dangerous offenders will be given an extended sentence of imprisonment, which is a determinate sentence of which the defendant must serve at least half. The defendant may be released during the second half of the sentence, providing he receives a positive recommendation from the Parole Board. In addition to the extended sentence provisions under the Act, dangerous offenders must also receive extended supervision periods of up to five years for nonviolent offenders and up to eight years for violent offenders. 

Would you like to know more about the history of the English language (including the particularities of Canadian English)? If you live in the Greater Toronto area, sign up for my fun course this fall:
http://katherinebarber.blogspot.ca/2017/07/history-of-english-language-course-this.html

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