DCHP-1 Online

rub(b)aboo ult. < Algonk., prob. through Cdn F; cf. Ojibwa nempūp soup, broth; Cree apū soup

• 1 n. See 1964 quote.

  See also: burgoo  richeau  ruhiggan burgoo  

  • The precise origin of this widely used term of earlier days is obscure; it may have been influenced by burgoo, used by the English traders in much the same sense.

  • 1821  (1900)  Our Men are now eating Rababoo made of Pemican and Flour.
  • 1863  There . . . is scarcely enough firewood to cook the snipe you shoot, or to make the "rubaboo" kettle boil. . . .
  • 1909  There was this year plenty of buffalo meat and the Scotch women soon learned to cook it into "Rubaboo," or "Rowschow," after the manner of the French half-breeds.
  • 1930  How he had relished that first meal at home, consisting chiefly of rubaboo and bannock buttered with buffalo marrow fat.
  • 1964  There was the soup or stew called rubbaboo in which a lump of pemmican was chopped off and put in a pot of boiling water. If it was available, flour was added and possibly wild onions, sometimes a little sugar, occasionally a vegetable and a scrap of salt pork.

• 2 n. Fig. a miscellany; a mixed bag.

  • 1862  (1966)  I must tell now why I call these writings a Rubbaboo Journal. Any queer mixture gets that name among the voyageurs. When I try to speak French and mix English, Slavy and Louchioux words with it, they tell me "that's a rubbaboo." And when the Indians attempt to sing a voyaging song, the different keys and tunes make a "rubbaboo."
  • 1963  Another follow-up is Rubaboo 2 (Gage) an anthology of Canadian stories and poems.