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]).

  • 1957  BURN'S EUROPEAN STYLE-(KIELBASA) POLISH SAUSAGE LB. 49c 
  • 1970  Many households that still hold to the Lenten abstinence from meats, make up for that sacrifice on Easter Morning with baked ham, Polish sausage (kielbasa), spareribs, and jellied pigs' feet. 
  • 1979  6. Polish sausage or Kolbasi
  • 1984  If nothing else - and it's sure to raise eyebrows among tourists - the Ukrainian name on the bridge will bring to mind some of the more endearing images of the North End: the baba in her babushka scuffing along Selkirk Avenue with her doubled-up Eaton's shopping bags, searching for the perfectly seasoned kubasa (garlic sausage); the sturdy, grizzled men at the McGregor Street steambaths, wrapped only in towels, breaking a loaf of rye bread to eat with their pickled herring; the legendary street toughs who only needed to say "North End" to get what they wanted, when they wanted it; the red light district across from the gas company (cheerily christened the "assworks across [from] the gasworks"); the Sunday afternoon concerts by ethnic dancers in elaborately embroidered costumes and by deep-voiced, spine-tingling choirs. 
  • 1989  Slovenian: Flancati (cake-fried crispies), 5 for $1.00; Krofi (cookies), $0.25; Jabolcni Zavitek (cake prepared with crushed walnuts and oli and flour), $1.00; Klobasa In Zelje (ham and garlic sausage combined with sauerkraut and sauce), $2.50; Golaz (cubed meat with wine sauce served with bun), $2.50; Palacinke (crepes with jam), $0.25. 
  • 1990  He and my mom arrived last week after a five-hour flight from Edmonton, bearing 25 pounds of kubasa - garlic sausage. (Every Albertan of Ukrainian descent knows you can't get proper kubasa in Montreal.) 
  • 1991  From the lightly seasoned weisswurst, to schublig, a Swiss speciality, to burenwurst, a country smoked sausage, to garlicky kielbasa, a Polish favorite, there are dozens of varieties of sausages to sample. 
  • 1999  All of the favorites are on the menu: varenyky (perogies), holubtsi (cabbage rolls), kovbasa (sausage), borsch (beet soup), homemade bread and cinnamon buns baked in a clay oven. 
  • 2003  The next morning, everyone eats Slovak sausage ( klobasa ) with fresh bread rolls and mustard for breakfast before getting back on the trail. 
  • 2006  Like all immigrants, Ukrainians and Italians were not considered prestige groups when they first arrived (the former starting in the 1880s and the latter in the years before the First World War). No doubt a Ukrainian-Canadian of that era would be astounded to come back to life in 2006 and discover that such Ukrainian words as "baba" (grandmother), "paska" (an Easter bread),"holubtsi" (cabbage rolls), "bandura" (a musical instrument), and not just one, but three words for garlic sausage "kubie," and "kubie burger" - "kubasa," - are now included in a dictionary of Canadian English as fully integrated English words. 
  • 2012  Unfortunately, that's not the way the world works. Take the simple European garlic sausage, for example. To you, the reader, it's likely just a sausage. But to the newspaper editor, it's kubasa. Or is it kielbassa? Or kobvasa? What about kobasa? Possibly kolbassa? Not to mention klobassa, kobassa and a host of other variations. 
  • 2016  "There will be music, we'll be raffling off a vintage MG convertible and, of course, there will be a Manitoba meal at midnight featuring Kub bread, kubasa and perogies."