Words

flowage, n.

ALWAYS EXPECT the unexpected. This is a sound rule. Even so, I hardly guessed that a stout parcel I received in the post would contain Katherine Barber's new Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

That land-mass has long been a by-word for jibes about dullness (Oxford once published Canadian Military Anecdotes). Perhaps this was what the Daily Express meant, back in 1928, when it noted that "one of the most descriptive Canadianisms is the word `kick' instead of thrill".

Seventy years on, and this dictionary is hardly chockablock with the wild mintings upon which the press release dwells (Molson muscle: beer- belly; dipsy-doodle: evasion), but things emerge, such as a use of flowage not in the OED: a shallow pond.