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DARE News

3 . . .2 . . .1 LAUNCH!

Digital DARE is live!! Head to www.daredictionary.com, where you can see 100 entries for free, view lots of Volume VI maps and other free Resources, read the About DARE section, and click to subscribe to see boocoodles more!

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What Is DARE?

The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) is a multi-volume reference work that documents words, phrases, and pronunciations that vary from one place to another place across the United States... read more...

Like Our New Dust Jackets?

If you'd like your full set to match, you can get all new blue jackets from Harvard University Press.  On the bottom of this HUP webpage, they say: "Harvard University Press is happy to offer new dust jackets to longtime DARE devotees who would like their older volumes to match the updated look of Volume V. Please contact us for details."

Leonard Zwilling, General Editor and Bibliographer for the Dictionary of American Regional English, uses a magnifying glass as he writes a definition for storm porch, referring to one of the 35 dictionaries he uses in his research.

 

Joan Hall, Senior Scientist in the Department of English and Chief Editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), reviews index cards containing edited entries to be included in the fifth and final volume of DARE while working in the project's office in Helen C. White Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Feb. 5, 2009.

Luanne von Schneidemesser completed her term as president of the American Dialect Society at the annual luncheon during the annual meeting in Boston in January, giving the Presidential Address, entitled “Bubblers, Schnibbles, Lawyers, and Cheeseheads: Linguistic Outreach.  The Wisconsin Idea.”   She also presented Presidential Honorary Memberships to three graduate students, nominated by ADS members.  The recipients were Paul Reed, University of South Carolina (pictured here), Janneke Van Hofwegen, Stanford University, and Shelly Swearinger, University of Michigan.

Joan Houston Hall received the Dartmouth Medal on June 30, 2013, in Chicago at the annual conference of the American Library Association. The medal honors the creation of a reference work of outstanding quality and significance. See more photos.

Joan Houston Hall received the Dartmouth Medal on June 30, 2013, in Chicago at the annual conference of the American Library Association. The medal honors the creation of a reference work of outstanding quality and significance. See more photos.

Hall with Lachlan Story

Hall with Lachlan Story, son of George Story, one of the editors of the Dictionary of Newfoundland English. Hall gave the George Story Lecture at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's on Sept. 25, 2013.

New Survey Questions

Hall reveals some of the new questions in the Wisconsin survey at the George Story Lecture at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's on Sept. 25, 2013

 

Joan Houston Hall was one of two recipients of the 2013 Emory Medal, "the university's highest alumni honor." She is pictured here with Emory University President Jim Wagner, and the other recipient, Walter M. "Sonny" Deriso, Jr.  at the award ceremony on November 12, 2013.  Photo by Ann Borden.

daredictionary.com Homepage

Digital DARE launches December 2, 2013. Depicted here is the home page with the Regional Browse and Word Wheel features highlighted.  So many ways to explore DARE! Check it all out at daredictionary.com or  learn how you, your public library, or your institution can subscribe.

DARE Publicity

Want to check out more links to DARE in the news?  Want to find out some DARE words specific to your state? Want to hear audio samples of speakers from different parts of the United States?  Take quizzes? Get media contact info? Please check out the University Communications/DARE  website.

What are people saying about DARE?

“Touring the Dictionary of American Regional English is a road trip of the mind from sea to shining sea. . . . It speaks with authority about American regional speech and has also captured the popular imagination. It is a peerless resource for scholars, but at the same time delivers accurate information about regional vocabulary to laypersons who, until DARE, could not count on access to it.”      

Michael Adams, Humanities

“Can a person fall in love with a dictionary? If the work in question is the Dictionary of American Regional English, which has just published its fifth volume, Sl-Z, the answer appears to be yes.”

Heidi Landecker, The Chronicle of Higher Education

    “The recently completed Dictionary of American Regional English . . . explains more than 60,000 regional words and phrases. . . . It arrives in time for the 2012 presidential election with words like snollygoster, a Southern term for a self-promoting politician.”

Barbara Rodriguez, Associated Press

“For scholars of American English, this volume and the series it completes are a hoard of riches. . . . It is a repository of who we have been as a people, and who we are.”

John E. McIntyre, Baltimore Sun

 “A great project on how Americans speak—make that the great project on how Americans speak—is reaching completion this spring. . . . DARE stands alone as the most exhaustive record of regional speech in America, each page bursting with geographically nuanced information about the country’s diverse lexicon. It’s a joy to page through: Where else would you learn that snuff for chewing is called snoose in the Pacific Northwest, and also goes by the name Swedish condition powder?”

Ben Zimmer, Boston Globe

"With more than 60,000 main entries, covering the manifestations of the American dialect through much of its history, DARE represents, in the opinion of this reviewer, the greatest achievement in American lexicography in the past 50 years."

Frank Abate, American Speech

 

 
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