Katherine Brooks, Huffington Post [Original article contains additional links/illustrations.]
From twistification to storm caves to slushburgers, the U.S. has quite the history of local language quirks.
Image from article, with caption: HUFFPOST/ISABELLA CARAPELLA .Source: Dictionary of American Regional English
Bizmaroon, doodinkus and splo.
For over 50 years, a group of intrepid lexicographers have been documenting words like these ― regional terms and phrases that were once popular in states like Wisconsin, Kansas and Tennessee. Collected together in the Dictionary of American Regional English, the words make up a fascinating repository for old-fashioned, funny-sounding and unmistakably local language quirks across the United States.
But the six-volume compendium might soon be coming to an end.
DARE began with a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor named Frederic Cassidy. In 1962, he became chief editor of a project dedicated to American dialects, and from 1965 to 1970, he oversaw a team of 80 fieldworkers who traveled the country surveying thousands of English speakers and the regional sayings they held dear. From 1970 until 2013, experts in Madison used the massive amounts of survey data gathered to create an impressive, 60,000-entry dictionary now run by people like longtime DARE editors Joan Hall and George Goebel. Existing in both physical and digital form, the dictionary logs words including bluebird weather (in Maryland, it means a brief period of warm weather in autumn) and slushburger (to South Dakotans, a sloppy joe), as well as phrases like “I hope to my die” (used to make a strong assertion in Kentucky) and “inso” (a contraction meaning “Isn’t that so? Don’t you agree?” in Wisconsin).
While non-regional slang words spread like wildfire across the internet now, DARE is a lovely reminder that colloquialisms were once ― and still are, in some cases ― bound to the people and places of localized areas. Even if we’ve long forgotten that bizmaroon is a term for a bullfrog, doodinkus means gadget and splo is a stand-in for liquor, they remain a part of our country’s rich oral history. One of the dictionary’s primary functions today is, according to Hall, to combat the idea that language has been “homogenized” by present-day media and a hyperconnected population, and preserve the dialect that sets us all apart along the way.
“Language is changing, no doubt about that,” Hall, who’s been with DARE since the 1970s, told HuffPost, “but it doesn’t mean it’s becoming homogenized. If you think about the parts of your vocabulary that have to do with your family and friends and your community ― that have nothing to do with school or newspapers or standardized forms of communication ― you realize a lot of these words are not going to change because they are part and parcel of our human lives.”
And Hall’s not alone in her thinking. Bert Vaux, one of the linguistic professors behind a viral New York Times quiz adapted from the Harvard Dialect Survey he developed, claims that while it might be true that “traditional features of non-standard dialects are dying out, regional differences in vocabulary and pronunciation remain alive and well, and may even be increasing.” He cited the many, many enduring synonyms for “doodlebug,” a term he and other Houston-area natives use to refer to what others call a pill bug, roly poly, sow bug, potato bug, armadillo bug, slater, woody wig or monkey pea as evidence. Hall similarly offers the word “budge,” a relatively new Wisconsin term used in schools to denote cutting or butting in line, as in: “No budging, I was here first!”
Unfortunately, there are few resources other than DARE and projects like Vaux’s Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes that are taking the time to not only track new regionalisms across the U.S., but safeguard the local words and phrases whose usage is dwindling ― from Gullah words on the southern coasts to Mormon and Amish sayings in the heartland to Spanish-infused speech in the American Southwest. Due to lack of funding, Hall says that DARE will be winding down its services by the end of the year. Any future funding ― be it from federal agencies like the National Endowment for the Humanities or private foundations like the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation ― will be used to continue to update the digital version of DARE, but the organization will cease plans to continue its fieldwork and in-person research.
What will be lost if DARE discontinues its research? “We’d be losing an excellent resource for discovering things about our past,” Hall, who’s been technically retired for two years, said. “It’s a hugely important resource for history of the language in this country. It’s also very important for discovering differences among ethnic cultures. We have an index where you can look up Norwegian or Swedish or Spanish or French and find all the entries that say something about that in their etymologies, or you can look and see which entries were used primarily by rural people as opposed to urban, or well-educated as opposed to poorly educated, men and women. These are things that other resources don’t tell you about.”
Vaux agrees that nuanced data like that provided by DARE “can play significant roles in combating prejudices by making the general public aware of the sorts of variations that exist in our language and the fact that they typically result not from differences in intelligence or sophistication, but often are simply regional differences.”
For West Virginia–based writer Scott McClanahan, author of Crapalachia and The Sarah Book, a focus on dialect differences is certainly complex. “It’s easier to take a people’s natural [and] mineral resources as a society if you think they talk funny,” he explained. “It’s easier to stereotype and exploit a people who are seen as uneducated because they pronounce the word ‘pin’ the same as the word ‘pen.’”
McClanahan, whose books explore the people and things that make rural Appalachia tick, says his children won’t sound the way he sounds or use the words he uses, and he doesn’t think they should. “The way their great-grandparents sounded or the words they used would probably be shocking to their ears,” he said. “But inside of all our words are these secret little histories about war and famine and immigration and jobs our ancestors had.”
At the end of the day, Vaux believes that regionalism will persist “as long as it is important for humans to identify in-group and out-group status,” he concluded. “I don’t think that language as a whole will homogenize.”
Hall doesn’t think it will either, though she’s not relying on blind hope. “As an editor of DARE, I regret that many words seem to be on their way out, because they are interesting, appropriate and reflective of their regions,” she said. “But I also recognize that language change is inevitable, and nothing DARE or anyone else can do will keep them alive if they no longer serve their purpose.”
For more information on DARE’s recent efforts ― such as its digitization of more than 1,800 recordings of regional pronunciation ― you can visit the dictionary’s website. In the meantime, here are 50 words and phrases plucked straight from DARE’s catalogue that define the wonder of American Regional English:
Alabama
twistification (noun): a dance or quasi-dance with partners in facing columns; a party at which this and similar dances are danced
Alaska
sno-go (noun, verb): a snowmobile; to travel or transport by snowmobile
Arizona
Hualapai tiger (noun): a medium to large-sized, usually black predatory bug of the family Reduviidae, also called an assassin bug
Arkansas
rusty lizard (noun): a fence lizard
California
dingy (adjective): foolish, silly, crazy
Colorado
dagwood (noun): a large sandwich, layered with various ingredients
Connecticut
glawackus (noun): an imaginary monster
Delaware
mung you (pronoun): you all
Florida
scaper (noun): a rascal; a critter, varmint
Georgia
jook (noun): a hidden or sheltered place; an isolated stand of trees
Hawaii
nani (adjective): beautiful
Idaho
whistle pig (noun): a marmot, especially the woodchuck; a ground squirrel; a prairie dog
Illinois
bube (noun): a boy; a baby
Indiana
pully bone (noun): wishbone
Iowa
storm cave (noun): cellar
Kansas
doodinkus (noun): something whose name is unknown or forgotten; a gadget
Kentucky
dry-land fish (noun): an edible mushroom, usually a morel
Louisiana
king cake (noun): a party cake, usually made for Mardi Gras season, containing an object used to determine the “king” or host of a succeeding party
Maine
tunklehead (noun): a fool
Maryland
papershell (noun): a molted crab whose shell is just beginning to harden
Massachusetts
hosey (verb): to stake a claim or reserve a right to (something); to choose; the claim so made
Michigan
ya hey (interjection): used variously as an affirmation, greeting or attention-getter
Minnesota
ishy (adjective): icky
Mississippi
crab-apple switch (noun): a large pocket knife
Missouri
eversharp (noun): any mechanical pencil
Montana
lamb licker (noun): a sheepherder or lamber
Nebraska
waddy (noun): a cowboy, ranch hand
Nevada
cow country (noun): a rural place, “the sticks”
New Hampshire
baster (noun): an extraordinarily large or vigorous example of its kind; used as a mildly derogatory or affectionate term for a person or animal
New Jersey
Jersey devil (noun): an imaginary monster; a hobgoblin
New Mexico
majordomo (noun): the overseer of a ranch or mission; a person in charge of a group or project
New York
gooney (noun): a stupid, awkward person
North Carolina
gee-haw whimmeydiddle (noun): folk toy
North Dakota
hot dish (noun): a casserole or main dish
Ohio
devil’s strip (noun): the strip of grass and trees between the sidewalk and the curb
Oklahoma
turd-floater (noun): a heavy rain
Oregon
thunder egg (noun): a geode
Pennsylvania
grinnie (noun): chipmunk or ground squirrel
Rhode Island
stuffie (noun): a clamshell (especially that of a quahog) filled with a mixture of chopped clams and other ingredients and baked
South Carolina
sand chicken (noun): a small shore bird
South Dakota
slushburger (noun): a sloppy joe
Tennessee
oodlins (noun): a great quantity
Texas
Juneteenth (noun): June 19th, celebrated as the anniversary of the emancipation of slaves in Texas on that date in 1865
Utah
snowdrop (noun): a wood anemone (here: Anemone quinquefolia) or the closely related rue anemone
Vermont
leaf peeper (noun): a tourist who comes to view autumn foliage
Virginia
flosh (verb): to spill, splash; to cause to splash up, agitate
Washington
geoduck (noun): a large edible clam
West Virginia
slicky slide (noun): a playground slide
Wisconsin
inso (interrogative, exclamation): Isn’t that so? Don’t you agree?
Wyoming
coulee (noun): a valley or depression between hills
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