Words from the Dictionary of American Regional English
After half a century of studying jib-jabbing, linguists have just finished the nation's most ambitious dictionary of regional dialects
- By Abigail Tucker
- Smithsonian magazine, March 2012, Subscribe
On to Z!” reads the tombstone of Frederic Cassidy, the first editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE). He started the project in 1962, and the dictionary’s last words (Sl-Z) will finally be published this month. Thanks to DARE, we will always know that a “gospel bird” once meant a chicken, “long sugar” was molasses, a “toad-strangler” (a.k.a. “duck-drownder,” “belly-washer” or “cob-floater”) was a heavy rainstorm and “Old Huldy” was the sun.
The dictionary includes some 60,000 entries, based in part on thousands of interviews conducted from Hawaii to remotest Maine. Researchers asked locals a series of 1,600 vocabulary-prompting questions. They flashed pictures of indigenous flora and fauna and got their subjects to jib-jab, trade chin music or just plain chat. Editors at the University of Wisconsin at Madison scoured newspapers, diaries, billboards, poetry collections and menus. Each entry notes where and when a word seems to have surfaced and when it fell out of favor.
Happily, many humdingers remain on our lips, and local dialects still shape how we speak and are understood.
“Most people perceive themselves as speaking quite normal English,” says lexicographer Joan Houston Hall, the dictionary’s chief editor and Cassidy’s heir (he died in 2000). “Sometimes it’s quite a surprise to realize that the words they use every day and assume everybody knows wouldn’t be understood in other parts of the country.”
Those fluffy bits beneath the bed, for instance, are dust kitties (Northeast), dust bunnies (Midwest), house moss (South) or woolies (Pennsylvania). A potluck is a tureen dinner in upstate New York or, in the Midwest, a pitch-in or scramble dinner. Almost a whole page of DARE is dedicated to “wampus,” a Southern term for a variety of real creatures (such as a wild horse) and imagined ones, such as swamp wampuses and whistling wampuses.
Some DARE words hint at long-lost social occasions. At a “waistline party,” mentioned in African-American circles, the price of admission corresponded to a reveler’s girth; at a “toe social,” a mid-20th- century term, women draped in sheets were picked as partners on the basis of their feet. (Presumably they then danced together uninhibitedly, or “fooped.”) We can hear echoes of how men and women spoke to, or about, each other. In the 1950s, a man from the Ozarks might say his pregnant wife was “teemin’” or “with squirrel”—but not if she was around to hear him.
New words spring up all the time, but American language has become duller in some respects, because of the homogenizing impact of mass culture. The Subway fast-food chain has largely settled the great torpedo vs. hoagie vs. po’ boy vs. grinder vs. hero debate—most people just call a long sandwich a “sub.” Yet what makes for better conversation, a cold Texas wind or a “blue norther”? A baby frog on Martha’s Vineyard or a “pinkletink”? The loss of such words almost puts a lump in your goozle.
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Comments (16)
Regarding Nancy Peress's green pepper = mango. May be rare but was in full use in southern IN in the 1950's and perhaps still. Confused the hell out of my FL raised bride when we first visited my family there!
Posted by jack wilhite on May 4,2012 | 03:24 PM
Grew up outside Boston in the 50s and 60s and we had both milk shakes and frappes. A milk shake was just milk and syrup on the blender while a frappe has ice cream too ( not to be confused with my R.I. buddies who called one a cabinet. Now I live in the south and here a milk shake is a frappe! I won't even start on tonic.........
Posted by Steve on April 24,2012 | 09:05 AM
Thanks so much!!! I grew up in central Michigan. My sister in the 50's called me a nincompoop. Haven't heard that since. The article makes me remember and smile.
Posted by elaine laing on April 13,2012 | 02:01 PM
growing up in western pa. we were told to "go read up your room", pronounced red. it meant to clean up or get ready. and is it a wash rag or a warsh rag? a roof or a ruuf? a creek or a crick? and of course we don't drink soda, it is called pop.
Posted by doug on April 1,2012 | 08:35 PM
Dust bunnies, yes. But a potluck in the Midwest is a potluck. In my 71 years in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan and North Dakota, a potluck has always been called a potluck. Never heard of a pitch-in or scramble dinner. Don't know if you bring a hotdish to either of them. You do to a potluck. Jim Lein
Posted by Jim Lein on March 30,2012 | 06:34 PM
My favorite regionalism is from Central Pennsylvania. I once ordered a sausage sub (grinder, wedge, hoagie) in the town of Bloomsburg and was asked, "Do you want mangoes on that?"
At that time (early 1970s) green bell peppers were called mangoes. I've been told that this usage has since become rare.
Posted by Nancy Peress on March 26,2012 | 10:25 AM
My predominately Scots family background gave me some not so understandable terms. Greatgrandma slept under "kivers" (covers), cooked and ate "vittles" (food) that were prepared "out in the kitchen and then served back in the house, a reference to having the kitchen in a separate building in case of fire. Although I never knew her to drive a car, she knew they needed "tars" and that the road was paved with "tire". When my sister brought her New York City husband to the South, she had to interpret for him!!
Posted by tom wood on March 17,2012 | 01:16 AM
In New England anything 'gone cattywampus' was something that had gone "out of kilter."
Posted by Tod Young on March 14,2012 | 07:14 PM
I believe there's a mistake in the last sentence of the first paragraph in Ms. Tucker's article. "Belly washer" should be "gully washer." The idea was that heavy rains would descend into a gully and scour the bottom of debris that had accumulated in dry weather.
Posted by Robert Boos on March 14,2012 | 01:02 PM
Speaking American (March 2012)
As one who has been interested in regional variations in terms ever since, as a teenage soda jerk on Cape Cod I would have to explain that if ice cream beaten into a milkshake was wanted the proper term was frappe not a cabinet, a velvet, a frosted or a milkshake and no, a frappe does not resemble a sundae, I was drawn to the article, Speaking American. Most of the examples given were completely new to me but I must take exception to dust kitties (Northeast) and dust bunnies (Midwest). I have lived 81 years in the Northeast and the closest I've come to the Midwest is a couple of brief visits to Arizona. I have never heard of dust kitties. The embarrassment under the beds has always been known as dust bunnies here. As for the sub, I do recall it as a grinder but, yes, now it is always a sub.
Posted by Jean Vankin on March 12,2012 | 07:18 PM
Now we have a picture to go with the face. Wam-pus cat. Article is great and I felt the DARE is important so everyone will agree to the meaning of words.
Posted by Deborah Beaver on March 11,2012 | 08:09 AM
Thanks for the memories. In the 1920's and 1930's my story-telling Father would regale my brothers and me with tales of "The Great Australian Wampus Kittie that lived in the woods". Since he grew up in the Kansas and Oklahoma areas he must have picked up that legend and adapted it for our stories.
That picture will be included in the note book that I am compiling of my own life story, but regret that I do not remember any of the stories my Father told us.
Posted by Alberta Apenes on March 6,2012 | 11:01 PM
I agree that regional language is fascinating. While I was always amazed that kids from all areas of the country seem to have known and played the same childhood games (sometimes known by slightly different monikers), I was shocked that not everyone said "jaggerbush" for any type of plant with thorns, or "nebby" if your little sister kept pestering you and your friends. I guess only those from Western Pennsylvania understand.
Posted by Lynn on March 4,2012 | 09:34 PM
And if you know what a "jockey box" is, you're from Southern Idaho.
Posted by Deej on March 3,2012 | 08:40 PM
I worked for Fred Cassidy in 1966 as a UW-Madison grad student,when the DARE office on the Madison campus was a very large room filled with shelves holding many thousands of "word cards" collected by field researchers who had driven around the USA for years talking to local people with different dialects. Prof. Cassidy had a vast knowledge of American English and its roots. When my wife and I first met him, he began our conversation with an impromptu lecture on both our family names--their English and Scottish derivations and cultural contexts. It was our personal "Roots" experience, vivid still in our memories.
Posted by david foster on March 2,2012 | 05:14 PM
Our Facebook group "I grew up on Capital Hill" in Seattle have been discussing the term "tolo" which is a girl ask boy dance eg. Sally took Bob to the Tolo. Such a dance practically anywhere else in the country is a "Sadie Hawkins Dance."
Apparently, its useage comes from the Chinook word which means to win. Chinook is the language used by those who traded with the native Americans in the Pacific Northwest.
Regional language difference is a facinating topic.
Posted by Saralinda on March 1,2012 | 06:27 PM