DCHP-2

baywop bay wop, Bay Wop DCHP-2 (October 2016)

• n. — Newfoundland, derogatory, Urban culture

  an inhabitant of a coastal settlement.

  Type: 1. Origin — The pejorative term baywop is likely a variant of the dialectal British slang term johnny wop. The DNE (s.v. "bay" (1)) makes reference to the EDD (s.v. "johnny: ~wap"), where "johnny wap" is defined as a simpleton or a fool from the countryside. Newfoundland's southwestern England and southeastern Irish settlement history accounts for the lexical transfer. Any Newfoundlanders from smaller or more isolated villages may thus be negatively referred to as baywops by the "townie" inhabitants of St. John's (see the 1963 & 2006 quotations). See baynoddy for a close parallel term. Chart 1 indirectly confirms the Newfoundland connection within the .ca domain (regional charts were not possible).
  See also COD-2, s.v. "baywop", which is marked "Cdn (Nfld) derogatory".

  See also: bayman  townie  baynoddy  noddy ((2))  

  • 1963  It seems that students from St. John's -- The Townies -- do not want to integrate with us Baymen. They seem to keep in their own little groups and make very little, if any, attempt to become acquaintances with the out-of-town fellow Newfoundlanders. [...] A Bay Wop. 
  • 1963  We originate from the West Coast, and we resent the tendency of "Townies" to refer to all out-of-town students as "Bay Wops". 
  • 1969  BAYWOP, n. (Nfld. vulg.) Person from around the Bay. Loosely, an Education student. 
  • 1973  Most of the changes that have taken place over the past twenty years or so have been for the better, but in the process I believe that we may have lost something of our former spirit of independence, our friendliness, our tranquility and our hospitality. Having myself been born and brought up in an outport - a bay wop as the city slickers would say - and having been associated for most of my working life with people in isolated areas, I have been in a position to note some of those changes. 
  • 1983  "Bayman", "baywop", "didum" [...] were used to denigrate the speaker of some undesirable dialect. 
  • 1993  baywop -- person from an outport (pejorative) [...] 
  • 1999  There is growing evidence of a groundswell among Newfoundland writers - an attempt, perhaps, to take back the Rock from foreign usurpers like Annie Proulx. (How dare a marauding Yank presume to tell a genuine baywop what The Shipping News might be!) Donna Morrissey's debut work is the latest novel to crest on this wave. In it you will learn what a baywop is, and will dwell for a time in a 1950s outport community so small and isolated that it's near-impossible not to marry a blood relation. 
  • 2001  Rideout is a so-called "baywop", an informal Newfie expression for someone who comes from a small bay-side town in that unique slang that can only originate among the colourful people from The Rock. 
  • 2006  Why is it acceptable for her to label me -- and perhaps herself, for all I know -- as a "baywop" because I am not from the admittedly splendid city of St. John's? 
  • 2015  People from CBS will always be quasi-baywops and almost-townies. Wannabes in everyone’s mind. Then again, if I were an A1B with a summer home in Topsail, CBS might as well be on the far side of the moon.