Talking Like An American

John McWhorter reviews the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), now available online:

There is a delightful muchness in it. The standard dictionary necessarily focuses on what we all say, but it should not disqualify a word as English if only some of us say it. DARE is a much different English than we are used to seeing gathered in one place. From 1965 to 1970, the editor and his staff covered 1,002 communities nationwide, asking 2,777 people what they called 1,847 various items. The finished DARE contains 60,000 words and 2,985 maps. Tabulating all of the data was so gargantuan a task that the original editor didn’t even live to see the project completed.

It was worth the wait. Only from DARE can we learn that, across this great nation, dust bunnies have been referred to with a dazzling array of terms such as fooskies, ghost manure, rich relatives, cussywop, and more colorfully, pussy, slut’s wool, and yes, negro wool as well. Things get almost poetic with souls and even men, and my favorite is the apparently rather taciturn upstate New Yorker who gave the local term as type of fuzz.

Sadie Stein adds:

Just to give you a taste of the myriad riches contained therein, the following are all regional variations on informing a woman her slip is showing:

“It’s snowing down south”
“Your father likes you better than your mother”
“Whitey’s out of jail”