n. — Quebec, Housing
an apartment with a bathroom, a combined kitchen/living room and separate bedroom.
Type: 3. Semantic Change — In Quebec French, apartments are described according to the number of separate rooms, with a bathroom being counted as a half (Boberg 2005: 27), and these terms have been borrowed into Quebec English. The term varies depending on number of rooms, e.g. three-and-a-half for three rooms and a bathroom, four-and-a-half for four, and so on (see the 2012 and 2014 quotations). There is some room for interpretation, however. According to COD-2 (s.v. "two-and-a-half"), two-and-a-half refers to "an apartment having two rooms, typically a combined kitchen/living room and a bedroom, plus a bathroom". Boberg (2012: 500) states that a two-and-a-half is "usually what other Canadians would call a bachelor apartment and Americans a studio, with a kitchen and living room but without a separate bedroom". Further, Boberg (2005: 27) notes that an apartment "without a separate bedroom will therefore be a one-and-a-half or two-and-a-half, depending on whether it has a separate kitchen".
In Boberg (2012: 500, Table 1), two-and-a-half is shown to be the fifth most frequent French-influenced word in Quebec English.
The quotations below show the range of uses, from one-and-a-half (the 1929 quotation), to five-and-a-half (the 1971 quotation).
See also COD-2, s.v. "two-and-a-half", which is marked "Cdn (Que.)".