By Robert H. Moore
Contrary to the popular notion that mass media has homogenized American speech, regional words and phrases are thriving. This is fully documented by the monumental scholarly project known as “The Dictionary of American Regional English” (DARE).
As a DARE reviewer has noted, “Although language does change and some regionalisms disappear, there are still thousands in existence, and new regionalisms are always surfacing.”
Depending on where you were raised or currently live in America, you might call your grandparents mee-maw and pap-paw, or nana and pops. In Wisconsin a drinking fountain may be called a bubbler, while a potluck dinner may be a pitch-in in Indiana or a scramble in Northern Illinois.
In Wyoming old timers might refer to a rail fence on a ranch as a buck fence. What people in other sections of the country may refer to as a small valley or ravine might be called a coulee in Wyoming.
DARE captures these expressions and more than 60,000 others, which Harvard University Press published in six volumes from 1985 to 2013. Several months ago, Harvard released a digital edition and plans are underway to update it in the years ahead.
Interest in DARE has been driven, in part, by the sheer pleasure of everyday readers. They enjoy learning that when someone out West is moving in great haste, he may be described as going hell-for-leather, or if a Southerner is invited to a rip-roaring party, she could be headed for a hog-killing time.
In Utah, you warn your teenagers that there will be penalties if they slough (play hooky). If you are traveling in the Gulf region and are told to get ready for a toad-strangler, be on the lookout for a sudden, heavy rainstorm.
Project Assistants Beth Witherell (left) and Jennifer Ellsworth, listen- ing to DARE tape recordings.
Harvard’s publication of digital DARE represents a 50-year effort that began at the University of Wisconsin in Madison under the legendary lexicographer Frederic Cassidy. Since 2000, the project has been under the direction of Dr. Joan Houston Hall.
The Cassidy/Hall achievement has been celebrated on national radio, TV and in feature stories in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine and scores of other publications. The range of frequent DARE users includes an eclectic mix of teachers, students, and librarians as well as forensic linguists, law enforcement officers, physicians and Hollywood dialect coaches.
For purposes of linguistic analysis, DARE divides the country into various regions.
Wyoming is grouped in the Northwest with Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
In the following contribution for Branding Iron readers, Dr. Hall has selected words and phrases that might resonate with residents of the Northwest. However, she cautions that words aren’t confined to state lines. Dr. Hall writes:
During this remarkable winter with its “polar vortex,” Northwesterners will especially appreciate the Chinooks when they appear. These warm winds, blowing from the west over the Rockies, are in sharp contrast to the blue northers experienced in Texas, where the cold wind from the north can cause the temperature to plummet in a matter of hours.
When the snow does stay in the Northwest, children take advantage of it by grabbing their sleds and going belly-buster down the hill. Their compatriots in Pennsylvania and New England would be going belly-bumper, while cousins in Upstate New York would go belly-gut and those in the North East and North Central states would go belly-whopper.
If there’s ice and snow on the roads, teenagers might go hooky-bobbing, holding on to the back of a car and sliding behind on the soles of their boots. When their peers do it in Utah, they say they are bizzing. Folks in Wisconsin will go skeetching, but in the Northeast, instead it’s skitching.
When spring comes, Wyoming folks enjoy the outdoors in mountain valleys they might call holes. That may not sound enticing until you visualize Jackson Hole and the Tetons. In Colorado, such a high-elevation valley is more likely to be called a park.
Picknickers at Jackson Hole shouldn’t be surprised if a camp robber swoops down and flies off with their potato chips. That plucky blue jay goes by many other names as well, including bird o’ Satan, blue devil, corn thief, and nest robber.
In Wyoming and Utah, if someone tells you to put out a fire, they may say, “Dout the fire.” One example of this expression is found in this sentence, “Dout the fires thoroughly and see that none of the children lag behind.”
For those who want to learn more about the work of Dr. Hall and her colleagues, copies of DARE are available from booksellers and in university, college and city libraries. The digital edition should be available through libraries across the country in 2014. For an individual access subscription, see www.daredictionary.com
To learn more about DARE, go to www.dare.wisc.edu and read the “About DARE” section, check out 100 sample entries and hear audio examples of speakers from different parts of the country.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dr. Robert H. Moore holds a Ph. D. from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He has been associated with the DARE project since his graduate student days at UW and is a Founding Member of DARE’s Board of Visitors. For more information on his association with the Dictionary, please Google – Frederic Cassidy Robert Moore.
