The lexical legacy of Moira Rose: How Catherine O’Hara’s sesquipedalian brilliance captivated Anglophiles

Moira, the Schitt’s Creek matriarch, exists as her “figurative granddaughter”—a former C-list celebrity whose “lexical bombast is on par with her flamboyant haute couture wardrobe,” as observes in The Unofficial Moira Rose Dictionary.

Both women inhabit grand theatrical personas born of former lives in the spotlight. Both struggle to adapt to new realities; for Moira, this means enduring the humiliating plunge from wealth into life at a roadside motel in a town her husband once purchased as a joke. Yet where Desmond descends irrevocably into tragedy, Moira finds her way towards something approaching warmth. “Beneath the plumage is a wife and mother learning how to love and care for others,” the dictionary’s description reads.

For her portrayal, O’Hara garnered numerous accolades, including a Canadian Screen Award for best actress in a continuing leading comedic role for four consecutive years between 2016 and 2019, as well as a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series, according to a CBC News report from April 2020.

The secret sources

Actor Catherine O’Hara enriched Moira Rose’s vocabulary with the help of these two dictionaries. (Source: via amazon.in/AI)

The mystery of where Moira’s magnificent vocabulary originated was finally solved during a now-legendary Instagram Live event on 6 April 2020. As CBC News reported at the time, O’Hara went live via the @schittscreek Instagram account, drawing nearly 7,500 fans eager to learn the secrets behind Moira’s lexicon.

Pulling out a well-worn notebook, O’Hara revealed the source material that had inspired the show’s writers: Foyle’s Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual Words and Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary. These out-of-print volumes have since become “much desiderated” among fans and coveted collectors’ items for those hoping to channel their inner Moira.

Actor Catherine O’Hara dressed as Moira Rose. (Source: Pinterest)

“The rule is to not be consistent when it comes to speaking like Moira Rose,” O’Hara told her enthralled audience, before delighting them with readings from her notebook. Among the entries were “doddy mine” (baby), “crapulous” (foul-mouthed) and “fimble fumble” (lies). She enthusiastically encouraged viewers: “I hope you’re taking notes!”

Addressing fans as her “entourage of fairies,” O’Hara offered wisdom befitting the moment: “Don’t be carnaptious (bad-tempered). Spread warmth around you.”

The session concluded with a signature “caw caw” to all the Schitt’s Creek faithful, wrapping 36 minutes of livestream that fans would long remember.

A community-sourced Dictionary

Long before the Instagram Live revealed the official sources, fans had already begun crowdsourcing Moira’s magnificent vocabulary. A Reddit user whose post has since been deleted initiated a community project that would become a labour of love.

“I’m interested in compiling a free colourful PDF book on absurd words uttered by Moira,” the original poster wrote on the Schitt’s Creek subreddit. “One of my favourites is frippet. / (‘fripit) / noun. British old-fashioned, informal a frivolous or flamboyant young woman. ‘Don’t start without me you little frippet.'”

The community response proved enthusiastic. The thread, titled “The community sourced Moira Rose Dictionary,” invited fans to share their “most treasured turn of phrase,” with due credit promised to contributors. The project grew into what would become a substantial collection of nearly 400 words, each defined and used in a sentence, just as Moira herself might deploy them.

Among the lexical gems fans have collected are some true standouts. There is bailiwick, meaning one’s sphere of operations or particular area of interest, deployed in the line: “ooh, receptionist work is not my strong suit, that’s more Alexis’ bailiwick.”

There is callipygian, an adjective describing those with shapely buttocks, as in: “I should have appreciated those firm, round, mammae and callipygian ass while I had them.”

There is peregrination, a journey especially long or meandering, used when Moira explains: “Sadly, I won’t be able to squire you for today’s wedding venue peregrination.”

There is the aforementioned frippet, a frivolous or flamboyant young woman, immortalised in the command: “Don’t start without me you little frippet!”

And there is chockablock, meaning crammed full of people or things, as in: “It’s just that it’s the end of the week Twyla, so that’s always chockablock.”

A published tome

On popular demand there exists an unofficial dictionary: ‘The Unofficial Moira Rose Dictionary: From Abhorrent to Zealousness’. (Source: via amazon.in/AI)

The Unofficial Moira Rose Dictionary: From Abhorrent to Zealousness, credited to Ellie Roses Garden, was released on 29 October 2021. The 369-page paperback showcases Moira’s “splendiferous vocabulary and her most titillating utterances,” promising readers a “winding peregrination of the English language through this hefty volume.”

The book’s description echoes the very language it catalogues: “Schitt’s Creek matriarch and C-list celebrity Moira Rose is a singular character. She’s outrageous and absurd, but beneath the plumage is a wife and mother learning how to love and care for others.”

A legacy remembered

Catherine O’Hara passed away on January 30, 2026 at the age of 71. According to her death certificate, reviewed by multiple news outlets, the primary cause was a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot that broke loose and travelled to her lungs—with rectal cancer listed as a contributing cause. She died at a Santa Monica, California, hospital within hours of the embolism’s onset.

A private funeral service and Catholic mass was held in her honour on February 14, 2026 at St Martin of Tours Church in Los Angeles’ Brentwood neighbourhood, according to reports confirmed by her representatives.

The outpouring of tributes from her Schitt’s Creek family spoke to the woman behind the words. Dan Levy, who played her on-screen son David, called her “extended family before she ever played my family” in his social media tribute. Eugene Levy, her on-screen husband and friend of more than 50 years, wrote: “I cherished our working relationship, but most of all our friendship. And I will miss her.”

In the end, perhaps the most fitting tribute came from O’Hara herself during that 2020 Instagram Live, when she offered words of comfort that now read like her parting gift: “Soon there will be contiguity, that we are used to. And we will hold each other and be able to sauviate once again.”

For fans of Moira Rose, and of the brilliant actress who brought her to life, those words, and the magnificent vocabulary that carried them, will endure. In the meantime, as the inimitable Moira would put it, “Caw Caw.”