Parkade: One Canadianism or Two Americanisms

The word parkade ‘parking garage’ is widely recognized as a good example of a twentieth-century Canadianism, on account both of its origin and of its frequency. This article draws on newspaper evidence from the United States and Canada to trace the origins and development of parkade. It demonstrates that a form parkade ‘strip of grassed or planted land in a city’ (from park ‘urban green space’) is attested in the United States from 1911 onward and that a form parkade ‘parking lot’ (from park ‘leave a vehicle in a designated area, at the roadside, etc.’) is attested in the United States from the 1930s onward, developing the sense ‘parking garage’ by 1950 in the United States and 1952 in Canada. Neither word parkade is therefore of Canadian origin. The article explains how parkade came to be used at such a higher frequency in western Canada than in its country of origin and ends with a note on the use of the word in southern Africa.