We published the first volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English back in 1985. Volumes came every few years after that, and next year we’ll finally roll out Volume V, which will take us alphabetically from Si through Z.
Just last week Joan Houston Hall, the Chief Editor for the series, announced via Twitter that all of the data for DARE Volume V has been delivered to us at the Press. To celebrate that milestone, let’s have a little Balderdash-style fun. You guys know Balderdash, yeah? Toss out an obscure word, everybody makes up their own definitions, then they’re read aloud along with the actual definition and each player has to guess which one is correct. We stole part of the fun and made up the fakes, so you just have to guess the real definitions. All of these words came via the @darewords Twitter account, which you really should be following.
All right, let’s play some DAREderdash. Answers are below.
all horns and rattles:
(a) very angry
(b) in heat
(c) lacking depth or substance
(d) noisy
foop:
(a) a variety of fungus
(b) to dance uninhibitedly
(c) generic term for sugary cereal
(d) to make a mistake, to flub
blind tiger:
(a) one who lashes out indiscriminately
(b) a game of hide-and-seek played in the dark
(c) a speakeasy
(d) a practical joke
guffins:
(a) very large feet
(b) pigeons
(c) fussy toddlers
(d) jokers
footermans:
(a) on foot
(b) cement workers
(c) podiatrists
(d) soccer players
flabberjack:
(a) caramel-coated popcorn
(b) nonsense speech
(c) an apprentice lumberjack
(d) ripe yellow cucumbers
idiot spoon:
(a) a knife
(b) a shoehorn
(c) a ladle or other over-sized spoon
(d) a shovel or other digging tool
gravel-flipper:
(a) a manual laborer
(b) a critter that makes its home on a construction site
(c) a slingshot
(d) a salesman
optriculum:
(a) a doodad, a thingumbob
(b) a magnifying glass
(c) a mirage
(d) an early animation device
fuzzywog:
(a) a caterpillar
(b) a roll of dust under furniture
(c) a ball of hair pulled from a hairbrush
(d) a stuffed animal toy
Answers:
all horns and rattles: (a) very angry. [West]
foop: (b) to dance uninhibitedly.
blind tiger: (c) a place that sells liquor illegally; a speakeasy. [chiefly South, Western Midland]
guffins: (a) very large feet. [Virginia]
footermans: (a) on foot. “no cowman would go footermans to heaven or to hell, [so they] swung up on strange horses, and rode off together.” [Montana]
flabberjack: (d) ripe yellow cucumbers used for sweet pickles or left to spoil in the field. [csWI]
idiot spoon: (d) among loggers and miners, a shovel or other digging tool. [chiefly West]
gravel-flipper: (c) a slingshot.
optriculum: (a) same as doodad, thingumbob, etc. “Where is that optriculum?”
fuzzywog: (b) a roll of dust under furniture.
