Eastern European Roots of Canadian Underwear Terms “Gitch” and “Gotchies”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, yeah, so my name is Jordan Wallman. I’m from Steinbeck, Manitoba, up north in Canada.

Welcome to the show, Jordan. What can we do for you?

For me and my wife, we were in North Africa recently, just this summer. Just, you know, just being part of this English program, teaching high school students out there, just English. And we got to work with Americans.

What was funny is, you know, we’re sharing stories with these Americans. And I was, you know, telling the guys that you should go check out a hamem, which is basically a spa. And I told them, but you would have to do it the way Tunisians would do it in your gitch. And they would all look at me weird, and I realized that actually Americans don’t use the word gitch. And yeah, it was shocking for me. And it’s just such a common word in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and Canada.

And what was even funnier is I actually found out that gitch is only a word in Manitoba, Saskatchewan area. So I guess my question is, yeah, why is that? Why is it only kind of around Saskatchewan, Manitoba? And where does this word come from?

Jordan, what does it mean? What is a gitch?

I guess to describe what it means, it’s basically underwear. So I’m in my gitch or something. That’s just kind of how you say it.

So to go to the spa, you had to be in your gitch.

Well, that’s how I guess they do it out there, right? So it was just kind of, that’s how I said it, I guess. But it’s just such a common word, you know, that we use. It just means underwear.

And how do you spell it?

G-I-T-C-H.

Yeah, Jordan, your data aligns with what I know about this term. I’ve done some digging on this and actually had an entry for it in my official dictionary of unofficial English because it was new to me. So I had to do some research on it. And there was an entry for it in the latest edition of the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles. And if that’s not a fancy name for a dictionary, then I don’t know.

But we can just call it the DCHP. And this came out in 2016. It’s an online dictionary. And there’s a really fantastic entry for this, which confirms that it’s mostly Western Canada that uses this word. But there are a lot of spellings for it. So gotchies is a common name for it. G-O-T-C-H-I-E-S. Gotch. Gaunch with an N. Gaunchies. Gaunch. G-A-U-N-C-H. Gauch. So G-A-U-C-H. And gitch as you spell it, as you say it.

Oh, wow. Yeah. And the key here is this dictionary says what some of our commenters on our Wayword website have said as well is that they believe, these lexicographers believe, that it comes from Eastern European languages like Serbian and Croat, Hungarian, possibly Polish and Ukrainian. There’s a word for underwear in those languages that’s very similar to that. It might be spelled G-A-C-E or G-A-T-Y-A, depending on the language. And it’s very similar to this word. So it has to do with the immigrants from those Eastern European, those Slavic countries that came to that part of Canada and then spread the word.

Oh, my goodness. That’s cool, right? Like, what I thought about, too, was like, because where I come from, it’s kind of a Mennonite and a Baptist community. And a lot of Mennonites here actually are from Ukraine and Russia. So, I mean, to me, that would make sense. I thought it was actually a hockey word, like something to use for hockey.

Yeah. Like, you know, a jock. But, like, that would be actually, that would make more sense almost if it’s kind of a Ukraine, you know, Slavic kind of language like that. So that is actually, that makes a lot of sense to me then.

Jordan, thank you so much for this. You have got to call us again. You’re going to explain Canada to us once for all.

Yeah, yeah. Take care now.

Yeah, thank you, guys.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye, Jordan. Appreciate it.

And we do have a lot of listeners in Canada.

We absolutely do. So we’d love to hear from you. Call us 877-929-9673.