DCHP-2

peasoup ((1)) Peasoup, pea-soup, pea soup, peasouper DCHP-2 (December 2016)

• 1a n. — Ethnicity, French relations, derogatory, extremely offensive, very rare

  a French-speaking descendant of the settlers of New France or Acadia; a Canadian of French ancestry.

  Type: 3. Semantic Change — The meaning of this term of abuse derives via metonymy, where one item associated with a group is taken to represent the entire group (see, e.g. kraut). The slur derives, as noted in OED-3 (s.v. "pea-soup" (2)), ITP Nelson (s.v. "pea soup" (2)), and DARE (s.v. "peasoup" (2)), from a long association of French Canadians with the meal of pea soup. This connection is distinctive for the use of dried yellow split peas rather than green peas in Francophone cooking (Colombo 1976: 195), and was often commented on by foreigners in early explorers' reports (see the 1806-1808 quotation, which is the ordinary nominal use for 'type of soup' and documents the original source). The mid-1800s were a peak time for emigration from Britain to Canada. Anglophone-francophone tensions were on the rise in central Canada during that time, and found linguistic expression in the creation of slurs. DARE lists its earliest quotation from 1897, quoting a French-Canadian speaker of English, followed by a 1930 quotation from the Pacific Northwest.
  The use as an attributive adjective (see meaning 1b) is documented three decades before the nominal meaning, yet the noun is likely the original use.
  See also COD-2, s.v."pea soup" (3), which is marked "Cdn", Gage-1, s.v. "peasouper" (1), which is marked "Cdn.", and OED-3, s.v. "pea soup" (2), which is marked "N. Amer.".

  See also: French Canadian (def. 1)  habitant  peasouper  francophone (meaning 1)  kraut  crawfish  square head (meaning 2)  

  • The term is included for reasons of historical accuracy and completeness. It is not intended, as clearly indicated in the usage labels "derogatory" and "extremely offensive", as a term for current use or a term, meaning or usage that is in any way condoned.

  • 1896  "Yes, an' dey call us Johnny Pea-soups."
  • 1912  "Pea-soup! I never drink with the likes of you, Pauquett!" ejaculated Bill. . . .
  • 1945  The soldier edged against him. "Listen, you goddam peasoup, you're too fast with your mouth."
  • 1978  I have used this untranslatable "pea soup" as any Canadian could use the word "Canuck": as a way to revendicate the past as part of the present. In four words: "Pea soup is beautiful". 
  • 1998  With questionable accuracy, he wrote, that "there is the most impassable race-barrier separating the English Canadians and the French Canadians; on the English side this is interpreted as indicative of a racial superiority, enjoyed by them vis-a-vis the 'Peasoups.' 
  • 2010  The multiple personality of Canada depends mainly, it is true, upon the two dominant racial groups, the English and the French. [...] Then there is the fact that class here is race: The Anglo-Saxon suffers from a Hitlerian superiority feeling, and the "Peasoups" (as the French are called) have had to put up with a lot of contempt from the master race. 

• 1b adj. — Ethnicities, French relations, derogatory, extremely offensive, very rare

  relating to Canadians of French ancestry (see meaning 1a).

  Type: 3. Semantic Change — Peasoup is used as a pejorative adjective that refers to francophone descendants of the settlers of New France or, more broadly, French Canadians.

  See also: square head meaning 2  

  • The term is included for reasons of historical accuracy and completeness. It is not intended, as clearly indicated in the usage labels "derogatory" and "extremely offensive", as a term for current use or a term, meaning or usage that is in any way condoned.

  • 1806-1808  (1813)  [[The Habitans'] chief article of food is pork, as fat as they can procure it. They all keep a great number of swine, which they fatten to their liking. Pea-soup, with a small quantity of pork boiled in it, constitutes their breakfast, dinner, and supper, day after day, with very little alteration, except what is occasioned by a few sausages, and puddings made of the entrails when a hog is killed; or during Lent, when fish and vegetables only will suffice.] 
  • 1866  "I want none of your d----- peasoup excuses, or promises," and, calling upon the hostler, a fat-blooded Englishman, he ordered him to stable the horse immediately, and keep a sharp "look out" to that Canuck Frenchman. 
  • 1909  J. McLaughlin and W.X. McDonald left on Saturday for Quebec to visit the scenes of their youth. The shiftboss will probably act as advance for the silvery-tongued orator in a Boundary publicity campaign of the "peasoup" country. 
  • 1965  It reminded me of a problem I encountered . . . when . . . describing our childhood forays in Ottawa between pea-soup and English-speaking gangs.
  • 1987  He went home every night with the final edition of The Montreal Star tucked under his arm, and I supposed at first that he preferred his paper in English to polish up his language a bit, but he soon set me straight on that. "I'm peasoup myself," he said, "but my wife is from Nova Scotia." 
  • 2005  French Canadians, a majority in Quebec, were often treated as inferior by unilingual anglos and American bosses who addressed them in English only. I was raised in Beauharnois, where the anglo minority learned French by playing with neighbours, then went on to jobs that required bilingualism. Even if we "tetes carres" were destined to all go to hell, as our Catholic "peasoup" friends would say, we played cowboys and marbles and learned their language, culture and religion, as they did ours.