How do Americans really talk-what are their hometown, everyday
expressions in the many regions and sections of this huge country?
The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), twenty years in
preparation, answers these questions. It gives visible proof of the
diversity-and the vitality-of American folk language, past and
present. DARE includes thousands of words and phrases not found in
conventional dictionaries, and out-of-the-way meanings for common
terms. Here are local names for familiar objects, from old cars to
frying pans to dust-balls under the bed (176 names for these); for
plants, animals, and critters real and imaginary; for rainstorms
and heat waves; for foods, clothing, children's games and adults'
pastimes; for illnesses and traditional remedies. Here are
terms-salty, sarcastic, humorous-by which people describe each
other, their physical appearance, characters, emotions, states of
mind. Here are metaphors and similes galore. In Wisconsin a man
whose motives are suspect "has beans up his nose." In Georgia a
conceited person is "biggity"; someone important or self-important
in the Northwest is "bull of the woods." A close friend may be
"bobbasheely" (Mississippi) or an "ace boon coon" (New York City).
West of the Appalachians the old saw "I wouldn't know him from
Adam" becomes "I wouldn't know him from Adam's off-ox" (or, in the
South, "from Adam's housecat"). These and some twelve thousand
other expressions are identified and explained in the first volume
of DARE. While DARE is the work of many dedicated people, it owes
its existence to Frederic G. Cassidy, who in 1963 agreed to
organize the project, raise funds for it, and serve as
Editor-in-Chief. Cassidy trained teams of fieldworkers and equipped
them with a carefully worded questionnaire: 1,847 questions grouped
in 41 broad categories ranging over most aspects of everyday life
and common human experience. From 1965 to 1970 the fieldworkers
conducted week-long interviews with natives of 1,002 representative
communities in all fifty states. The two and a half million items
gleaned from the fieldwork, coded and computer-processed, are
DARE's primary data base, a rich harvest of regional Americanisms
current in the seventh decade of this century. Earlier collections
have been drawn upon as well, notably the 40,000 expressions
recorded by the American Dialect Society since 1889; and some 5,000
publications, including regional novels and diaries and small-town
newspapers, have been combed for local idioms. A unique feature of
the dictionary is the computer-generated maps that accompany many
of the entries to show the geographical distribution of the term.
The base map is schematic, distorting the areas of the states to
reflect their population density. Volume I includes extensive
introductory material on DARE itself and on American folk speech.
Its entries, from Aaron's rod to czarnina, cover nearly a quarter
of the total DARE corpus.
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