“Quick willies” in the Okanagan
I was looking through “BC Then and Now: Okanagan / Kootenay / Cariboo / Volume One” by Roland Morgan (Vancouver, BC: Bodima, 1978).
Exterior of a traditional pit house in BC (image credit: Transitions Abroad)
It’s a book with both historic and recent photographs of identical scenes in various BC places.
The historic photo for Kelowna is of a traditional pit house.
Morgan calls these “kekuli houses–known as ‘quick willies’ to settlers.'”
I’ve seen this term as an English borrowing with a qu- at the beginning (quiggly, I think).
Also as “winter kickwillies” among the Lower Similkameen Indian Band (Sməlqmix). (That’s a clickable link.)
But ‘quick willies’ is new to me.
Nice regionalism!
And nice folk etymology — turning a word that’s foreign to you into something that sounds like your own language.
Kukuli, Keekwillie, and all the variations derive from CJ. Here the Secwépemctsín word for winter home is “c7ístkten̓”, so you know the CJ words were plonked and stayed in settler lingo, as they were easier to pronounce.
LikeLiked by 1 person