adj. — historical pronunciation, originally World War I, Military
a light-brownish colour.
Type: 5. Frequency — Until recently, many Canadians pronounced this word as if there were an [r] before the second K. Canadian soldiers heard this unfamiliar word (of Hindi origin) from English speakers who normally drop [r]-sounds after a vowel, for example, in words like "hard" and "cork". The Canadian hearers assumed the word should have an [r]-sound and added it in. Walter S. Avis states that the pronunciation of the term as a "pertinent example [...] which the great majority of Canadians [in the early 1970s, SD] at all social levels pronounce /'karki'/, as opposed to British /'ka:ki'/ and American /'kæki'/" (Avis 1973: 65, see also Avis 1956: 44). The 1916 quotation from a WWI soldier shows evidence of the spelling with [r], which makes sense in the Canadian context: hearing British soldiers pronounce /ka:ki/, Canadians assumed that they applied [r]-deletion, just as they would in "car": so British /ka:/, rather than Canadian /kar/. By that principle, Private Elmo Sully's spelling is perfectly logical and phonetically consistent. The 2013 quotation, by an septagenarian writer, confirms the long endurance of the form.
Today, the earlier Canadian pronunciation seems to have given way to international R-less [ka:ki] except in the older generations and in less educated contexts. The 2009 quotation shows that the variant, while rare in print, still seems to be in use in Canadian rural regions. The frequency argument made here is based on Avis' and others' observations and is not based on our frequency charts.
Cork book, from caulk boot, is another example of confusion between (Canadian) speakers of rhotic English and (British) non-rhotic speakers.