Joan Houston Hall is Distinguished Scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She joined the DARE staff in 1975, became Associate Editor in 1979, and was named Chief Editor in 2000.
This long-awaited, definitive and fascinating Dictionary of
American Regional English [DARE]...is all we had hoped for and
more. It includes the regional and folk language, past and present,
of the old and the young, men and women, white and black, the rural
and the urban, from all walks of life...Although DARE will be one
of the most scholarly, comprehensive and detailed dictionaries ever
completed...it will also be one of the easiest and most enjoyable
to use or browse in...This is an exciting, lasting work of useful
scholarship accomplished with excellence, a work that scholars and
laypeople alike will study, use and enjoy for generations.
*New York Times Book Review*
It already seems clear that...the dictionary will rank as one of
the glories of contemporary American scholarship...it is endlessly
rewarding to dip into, and if you look up a particular word or
phrase you are in constant danger of being seduced to something
else...It is a work to consult, and a work to savor--a work to last
a lifetime.
*New York Times*
Proof that tourism, television and technological change haven't
rounded off all the gaudy and gracious edges of the way we
talk.
*USA Today*
A staggering work of collective scholarship...DARE is not only a
reference treasure for the scholar and the general word lover, it's
a lode for raiding parties by specialists of all kinds...Most of
all, DARE is evidence that American speech will never become stale
and fusty, that the great linguistic homogenization of television
is a myth.
*Chicago Sun Times*
In its scope and thoroughness, Cassidy's dictionary is unmatched as
a kind of refuge for colloquialisms threatened with
extinction...Writers, etymologists and other devotees of verbal
arcana have never been given a richer browsing ground. But while
they are discovering that a blind tiger is a place to buy and drink
moonshine, or that there are 176 names for dust balls under the
bed, they are also bound to be awed by the dictionary's staggering
scholarship.
*Time*
More than 20 years in the making, this brand-fire-new tome is
loaded with the bare-naked speech that Americans really use when
they 'bump their gums' with or without having had some 'sweet
spirits o' cats-a-fightin' or 'conversation fluid' to make their
chin music happen. The result is a testimonial to the
metaphor-making power of the American language at its most
vigorous.
*Newsweek*
To open its pages is to thrill at the exploration of the New World
and to trace the course of American history through its
language...Its editors, led by Professor Frederic G. Cassidy, have
caught the native poetry of America on every page.
*Smithsonian*
A monumental and impressive work.
*Language and Linguistics*
Because these volumes are the most complete lexical records we have
of the American experience, much of the history and contemporary
condition of American society can be found in their pages...We are
very fortunate to have DARE; it is not a dictionary; it is a
national treasure.
*Language in Society*
Here is the big news in the world of lexicography: DARE IV has come
out of the wordwork. The Dictionary of American Regional
English--repository of the most delicious dialect sources and the
most colorful evidence of the Americanization of the English
language--has now covered letters P to Sk...[This] is the
penultimate (one more to go) volume in the set that no library can
afford to absquatulate.
*New York Times Magazine*
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