Opinion
David AstleCrossword compiler and ABC Radio Melbourne presenter
February 18, 2026 — 11:30am
February 18, 2026 — 11:30am
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Schitt’s Creek felt too folksy at first. The pilot episode of the Canadian sitcom followed a bankrupt family of New York snobs into the boonies. Cool city cats meet simple country mice. I wasn’t sold.
The saving grace was pettifogging, a fancy term for quibbling over the small stuff. The word was blurted by Moira Rose to her “frippet” of an adult daughter, Alexis. Nor was Moira done. Name any episode and you’ll meet the winsome litany of mercurial Moira-isms, winsome and mercurial included.
Catherine O’Hara, of course, played the Rose matriarch. Sadly, Catherine left us in late January, dying suddenly at 71. Tributes bloomed across the comedy world, as co-stars recalled her work in Home Alone, Beetlejuice, the mockumentaries of Christopher Guest.
Catherine O’Hara as Moira Rose in a scene from Schitt’s Creek.AP
Since O’Hara’s death, I’ve been gorging the chanteuse’s glossary, amazed at how widely she roamed the dictionary. In one utterance, Moira rolls out two $50 words, “After a glut of unasinous ideas put forth today, the room is suddenly bombilating with anticipation.” Or this to her agent: “My answer is yes, a clangorous and vociferous yes!”
Even idiom gets the makeover, where the horse has bolted transforms into “the dirigible has ascended”, just as “placing the carriage in the wake of the mare” is her way of putting cart before horse. Havarti? That’s her offbeat prompt as photographer to ask for “cheese”. Singultus? Moira-speak for hiccup, telling her son David the day did have a slight singultus.
Across six seasons, the running joke is the puzzlement writ on local brows whenever this flamboyant balatron (“one who speaks a lot of nonsense and is characterised by self-indulgence”) flexes her vocabulary. Roland Schitt, the mayor played by Chris Elliott, speaks for all when saying, “No idea what that means but it doesn’t sound good.”
Name any episode and you’ll meet the winsome litany of mercurial Moira-isms, winsome and mercurial included.
So why resort to ornate language if bafflement ensues? Or prejudice, as feared by John (Moira’s husband played by co-creator Eugene Levy), the couple seeking to buy a Cadillac. Moira states her ploy, “I’m a trained actor, a humble backstory will disabuse the salesman of any notion we’re too patrician.” John blinks, saying “Well okay, but let’s start by losing words like patrician.”
If language is made to connect, why alienate with bombilate? One reason is fun. Fun and fizz. You may not know grinagog and doddypoll, but don’t they sound fabulous? Either you delve the dictionary later or let their novelty wash over you, using context to intuit a pathological smiler and simpleton respectively.
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Notably, in both cases, the fancier label softens the truth, just as potential insults like “waggish little nymph” and “shrewd Reynard” radiate a signature fondness when directed at Alexis. In like vein, Moira protects herself, lamenting “I should’ve appreciated those firm round mammae and callipygian ass while I had them.”
The more you grow with the show the more you appreciate how the lavish speech is also Moira’s way of hanging onto her endangered sophistication, an impulse both tragicomic and beautiful. In one story she rebukes David for trying to join an Amish community: “What you did was impulsive, capricious and melodramatic. It was also wrong.” Maybe. But Moira’s flair for toggery (clothing) matches her thespian panache for English, and that’s completely right.
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David Astle is the crossword compiler and Wordplay columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is a broadcaster on ABC Radio Melbourne.From our partners