Editor of Dictionary of American Regional English finally reaches Z

Todd Finkelmeyer:

It took nearly five decades, but those producing the Dictionary of American Regional English finally reached Z.

The dictionary, known as DARE, is produced on the UW-Madison campus and includes a range of words, phrases, pronunciations and pieces of grammar that vary from one part of the United States to another.

Like a conventional dictionary, DARE is arranged alphabetically. But the multi-volume DARE goes on to not only give information about a word's meaning but to indicate where people use it.

Americans, for example, have a collection of words for sandwiches served on a long bun that include meat, cheese, lettuce and tomato. The Dictionary of American Regional English can tell you -- and often show you via maps based on fieldwork -- where words such as hero, hoagie, grinder, sub, Cuban and the like are the local terms for this kind of sandwich.

The fifth volume of the dictionary, covering Sl through Z, now is available from Harvard University Press.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 6, 2012 1:39 AM
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