The DARE map (top), with state codes, compared with a geographic map. DARE’s map is based on population density as of the 1960s. It shows responses DARE collected during fieldwork in 1965-70.
Where does a dictionary reside nowadays?
In the cloud, of course.
But what if was created before there was a cloud? Then you’d have to look for it on the ground, in ink on paper.
And on paper, perhaps the most monumental lexicographic enterprise in the field of American English has just been completed: the Dictionary of American Regional English, with some 60,000 entries and thousands of maps, published in six 8¾-by-11¼-inch volumes by Harvard University Press. Too bad it’s not online. RIP, right?
Wrong. In this century, if you’re a dictionary, you have a chance for an afterlife online. You need to be…