DCHP-2

kubasa kielbasa, kolbasa, kolbassa, kobasa, < Ukrainian ковбаса (kovbasa) 'sausage' DCHP-2 (October 2016)

• n. — Food, predominantly Western Canada

  a smoked sausage with pork and garlic.

  Type: 5. Frequency — This term is an anglicization of either ковбаса (kovbasa), the Ukrainian word for 'sausage' or of Polish kiełbasa, as suggested in the 1957 quotation. Other Slavic cognates are Czech klobása or Russian колбаса (kolbasa). There are multiple varieties of sausage in Slavic countries (see the 1991 quotation), and multiple anglicizations of these forms besides kubasa (e.g. kielbasa, kovbasa, kolbasa, see the 2012 quotation). It appears that the meaning of kubasa has been narrowed to a specific type of Ukrainian garlic sausage (see Image 1, see the 1984 and 1990 quotations).
  Kubasa is more frequently used in Canada than elsewhere (see Chart 1). Within Canada, the term is most frequently used in Manitoba, followed by Alberta, and then British Columbia (see Chart 2).
  See also COD-2, s.v. "kubasa", which is marked "Cdn" and considered a "corruption of Ukrainian kovbasa."

  See also: butterfly  

  • The Polish borrowing appears to be the older one, yet the re-spelling of the Ukrainian-inspired kubasa is for the Anglophone closer to the English pronunciation than the Polish-inspired kielbasa (in the latter, what is rendered as an "l" in English is actually semi-vowel [w]).