The collection of regional words and phrases is beloved by linguists and authors and used as a reference in professions as diverse as acting and police work. And now, after five decades of wide-ranging research that sometimes got word-gatherers run out of suspicious small towns, the job is almost finished.
The dictionary team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is nearing completion of the final volume, covering “S” to “Z.” A new federal grant will help the volume get published next year, joining the first four volumes already in print.
“It will be a huge milestone,” said editor Joan Houston Hall.
The dictionary chronicles words and phrases used in distinct regions. Maps show where a submarine sandwich might be called a hero or grinder, or where a potluck - as in a potluck dinner or supper - might be called a pitch-in (Indiana) or a scramble (northern Illinois).
It’s how Americans do talk, not how they should talk.
“It’s one of the great American scholarly activities and people will be reading it for a century learning about the roots of the American language,” said William Safire, who frequently cites the dictionary in his “On Language” column in The New York Times Magazine. “It shows the richness and diversity of our language.”
Author Tom Wolfe has called the dictionary “my favorite reading.”
In awarding the two-year, $295,000 grant that will get the final volume into print, National Science Foundation reviewers called the dictionary “one of the most visible public faces of linguistics.”
