hoser

What it means

1. 1.

   An unsophisticated, beer-drinking, plaid-wearing man. Largely a comic stereotype rather than live vocabulary — Canadians use it about the stereotype, not about each other.

In use

• They played it up like a couple of hosers.

• Take off, you hoser.

  Note: A direct quotation from the comedy sketch that made the word famous. Saying it straight is a joke in itself.

Where it comes from

Popularised entirely by the 'Great White North' sketches of the early 1980s. Competing explanations — losing hockey teams hosing down the rink, siphoning petrol with a hose — are folk etymology attached after the fact.

First attested: 1980s