| Sumario: | ABSTRACT This paper explores semantic isoglosses of polysemous words, an understudied aspect of the Canada-US border by drawing on take up #9, an isogloss that appears to be spreading through the mainland Canadian population. The variable, which is approached from a philological-lexicographic as well as a quantitative-statistical perspective, is interpreted in the light of recent European cross-borders studies. Analogues with the situations in Austrian German (Austria-Germany) and British English (Scotland-England) are drawn. Set in a pluricentric framework, this paper argues that the Canada-US border remains a productive linguistic divide. Moreover, it is suggested that types of unexplored lexico-semantic variables may be responsible for some identity work across this international border, one of only two contiguous borders among the Englishes of the Inner Circle.
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