Some might celebrate with a shindy and others might hold a whindig or a wingding, but Joan Houston Hall just breathed a sigh of relief. After five decades, UW-Madison?s ambitious project to document the idiosyncrasies of American English reached both the zenith and ?z? this month, said Hall, the editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE). Volume Sl to Z is now for sale from Harvard University Press. From aa (rough lava in Hawaii) to zydeco (dance music in Louisiana Creole culture), the dictionary spans five volumes and 60,000 words.
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