DCHP-2

copybook copy-book DCHP-2 (May 2016)

• n. — Montreal

  a notebook.

  Type: 2. Preservation — The term copybook is synonymous with notebook (see also scribbler). Copybook is among the identified lexical items that marks Montreal as lexically distinct from the rest of Canada (see Boberg 2005: 36). Judging from the older quotations, the term was more widespread in 19th century Canada and appears to be a preservation in Quebec Anglophone English. According to the study, the majority variants elsewhere include scribbler in the Maritimes, exercise book in Newfoundland, and simply notebook everywhere west of Quebec (Boberg 2005: 44).

  See also: exercise book  scribbler  

  • 1845  His copy-book was then shown to me, and his writing was steady, and as good as that of most youths in his station of life. 
  • 1860  There is a great falling off in the attendance of children to this School, as the Register shows the maximum attendance to be only fourteen. There were nine pupils present at examination, all of whom were very young. Only one copy-book exhibited. 
  • 1881  It is all very well to say that you will "turn over a new leaf." But, let me ask, What about the past black leaves of guilt? The schoolboy, after spilling the ink on the page of his copy-book, turns over a new leaf, resolving that in future he will he [sic] more careful; but "turning over a new leaf" does not remove the blotted one. 
  • 1900  He was very angry with the master who set him this task, but, of course, he had to do it, and when it was done he took the copy-book as he had been told to do, and laid it on the desk, where all the boys' exercises were placed for revision. 
  • 1985  "School," wrote Katie, "was a lot different than it is today. The master was dumb and strict. We had to stand up if we wanted to say anything in class. [...] We wrote on slates with slate pencils and we had copybooks, but there were no books except a Bible we read from. We had to sing God Save the Queen every morning, and I didn't know that, but I learned it." 
  • 1992  Every school smells the same, an amalgam of disinfectant, chalk, steam table lunches and a faint whiff of wet coats. The odor rises around you inside the door at Public School 291. So does the sound, the high-pitched Babel of elementary education. Linoleum, blackboards, the marbled covers of copybooks. Universal school. 
  • 2007  "And if you have kids, there are school supplies," Kay said. "When I went to school it was like, here you go, three copybooks, a pencil and they cuffed you in the head. Now it's four Duo-Tangs and one of them has to be orange. You need this kind of calculator and that kind of eraser. It's crazy." 
  • 2014  Meanwhile, the teenage girls who had idolized [the Beatles] and scrawled Paul's name beside theirs in hearts on school copybooks met real boys. Demand for Beatles wigs, mugs, A-line shift dresses and lunch boxes abated. But they still loved the tunes.