Touque Season Is Just Around The Corner

Until I came to Canada I had no idea what a touque/toque was or had even heard the word. It seems it is a typical Canadian expression that came to English from French. Now what on earth is a touque? A touque is a knitted winter hat. My husband always uses this term instead of hat and it still sounds funny to me after 35 years.

Well, hubby put on his touque today for our walk around the lake as it had gotten chilly and a strong North wind was blowing. So him using this strange word gave me the idea for this blog post. In case you are wondering, no I haven't dug out my touque yet.

The Urban Dictionary has a couple of definitions for touque:

A Canadian must have.
Ok eh! Like it was so cold that we had to wear touques eh!

Every time someone says toboggan, I remind them that a toboggan is what you ride down a hill on, a touque is what you wear.

The WordWeb Online gives this defintion for touque:

A kind of warm cap winter wear, usually made from a knit bag with closed tapered ends by pushing one end within the other, thus making a conical cap of double thickness

Then I found a totally different definition from the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, where they won't need a hat for sure:

two units of capacity

a unit of dry capacity, approximately 22 liters
a unit of liquid capacity, approximately 18 liters.

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