That's right, a dictionary.
And this dictionary isn't like any other -- the Dictionary of American Regional English or DARE -- shows where people use words.
We all know, for example, that Americans have many names for the kind of sandwich that includes meats, cheeses, lettuce, tomatoes and more served in a long bun.
DARE tells you (and can often illustrate through the use of maps based on fieldwork) where the words hero, hoagie, grinder, sub, torpedo, and Cuban are the local terms for this sandwich.
It can also tell you where people use the words darning needle, ear cutter, eye stitcher, mosquito (or skeeter) hawk, sewing needle, snake doctor, or snake feeder (among other terms) for a dragonfly.
The dictionary, arranged alphabetically from A to Z, has been 45 years in the making, spearheaded by UW-Madison legendary professor Frederic Cassidy.
Launched in 1965, the project is based on thousands of interviews, newspapers, government records, novels, letters, and diaries.
The last volume of the dictionary is set for completion in 2011.
Over the summer, DARE was featured in the Wall Street Journal,DARE to Be Finished -- Maybe Next Year (June 12, 2010).
DARE's Chief Editor Joan Houston Hall was also featured in Newsweek,How to Speak American (July 30, 2010)
As Hall noted,
DARE’s research shows that American English is as varied as ever.
The language is diversified by immigration, of course, but also people’s creative license and the resilient nature of local dialects. We have dozens of ways to refer to a remote place, for instance, including the boonies, the sticks, the tules, the puckerbrush, and the willywags.
The proverbial village idiot, in such a place, might still be described as unfit to carry guts to a bear or pour piss out of a boot. If his condition is temporary, a Southerner might call him swimmy-headed, meaning dizzy. And if his home is dirty, a Northeasterner might call it skeevy, an adaptation of schifare, the Italian verb “to disgust.”
Read more in How to Speak American ...