Word: mcdavid
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...been wandering along the East Coast and through parts of the Midwest talking to people. He has popped up in all sorts of places, and chatted over everything from tea to corn whisky and orange bitters. "I always follow the custom of the country," says Raven Ioor (pronounced yore) McDavid...
...student of regional U.S. speaking habits, McDavid himself comes from South Carolina, and he has a purpose in all this random conversation. He is helping gather material for the multi-volume Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada which Philologist Hans Kurath is directing from the University of Michigan. The Atlas will trace lines of speech similarities ("isoglosses") on detailed sectional maps, and will take several more years to finish. Meanwhile, research already done on McDavid's beat provides a preview of the sort of thing the atlas-makers hope to do for the whole northern continent...
...McDavid's questions touch on everything from farms to funerals, crops to courting, health, weather and insects. He has learned that a dragonfly is a great help in filling out an isogloss. Yankees in some parts of New England call it a devil's darning needle, while some Southern Coast people go for mosquito hawk, and the Pennsylvania-Dutch merely turn the Old Country name for it into English: snake waiter...
...farmers call their cows also interests Researcher McDavid. The Scotch Irish, for example, brought along their favorite cow-call, sook, sook, when they came to the U.S. McDavid has traced sook, sook across Pennsylvania to the Alleghenies, then down the Shenandoah Valley as far as Lexington, Va. Many more farmers, especially in New England, prefer co-boss, co-boss...
...islanders of the North Carolina Danks speak the purest "Anglo-Saxon" McDavid has found...