DCHP-2

pure laine pur laine DCHP-2 (October 2016)

• 1 adj. — Quebec, Ethnicities

  relating to Quebeckers descended from the French settlers of New France.

  Type: 1. Origin — Pure laine is a French expression that is sometimes translated as "dyed in the wool" or "old stock," and which refers to the ancestry of the first French settlers. The 1870 quotation demonstrates an early use of the term in Canadian French, which was translated in the House of Commons debates as "pure". It is unclear when pure laine first began to be used in Canadian English, but the 1962 quotation comes from an English-language newspaper, albeit in a French phrase. Subsequent uses show that the term was transferred and integrated into Canadian English, at first needing English translation (e.g. the 1982 quotation), but later becoming a more fixed part of the lexicon (e.g. the 1997 and 2009 quotations do not add further explanation of the term). Boberg (2012: 497) lists pure laine as a product of contact-induced borrowing, a term that was "transferred from French-dominated provincial political discourse". The term is unique to Canada (see Chart 1).
  See also COD-2, s.v. "pure laine", which is marked "Cdn", and Gage-5, s.v. "pure laine", which is marked "Cdn. French.", ITP Nelson, s.v. "pure laine", which is marked "French. Quebec." and OED-3, s.v. "pure laine", which is marked as "Canad.".

  • Note the borrowing of French syntactical structure in phrases such as "Quebecois pure laine" (e.g. the 1997 quotation), where the adjective is following the noun as in French, not vice versa as in English (see the 2009 quotation).

• 2 n. — Quebec, Ethnicities

  a person descended from the French settlers of New France.

  Type: 1. Origin — It appears that the adjectival use of pure laine preceded the noun use by a generation or so.
  See also COD-2, s.v. "pure laine" (noun), which is marked "Cdn".