Cedar Rapids Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Relics for the Asking y Dennis Mont

CENTRALIA Ill AP Hundreds of Colonial American linguistic relics can be had for the asking says Prof Frederic Cassidy director of a million dollar project called the Dictionary of American Regional English He and researchers since 1965 have interviewed about 2000 volunteers feeding 25 million answers into a computer The work aims to map and define words peculiar to regions with many archaisms still spoken in parts of the country Cassidy notes examples from Tidewater Virginia and North Carolina like ute and abute and quirky terms such as golly marbles hippo gumbo whackum kettle cousin and plonk linger in use revealing a living American vernacular and a few words printed in Shakespeare long ago.