Although the definitions of “whoopensocker,” “winter potato” and “squeaky cheese” are common knowledge for some Wisconsin natives, for most Americans, these words might as well be part of another language.

All three, which mean something extraordinary of its kind, a stone pushed to the surface of the soil by winter weather and a fresh cheese curd, respectively, will be defined in the fifth volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English, a University of Wisconsin project tentatively scheduled for completion late next year.

The volume will contain words beginning with “sl” through “z” and will begin to wrap up a nearly 50-year project of defining regional terms across the entire United States.

“There’s nothing like it [in the U.S.],” DARE Chief Editor Joan Hall said. “We’ve never had an accurate description of the regional varieties of English across the country. This not only captures the difference from place to place, but the differences over time.”

While the idea of an American dialect dictionary has been around since 1889 when the American Dialect Society was founded, the DARE project was born in 1962 when UW English professor Frederic Cassidy presented a paper on the topic.

Work began in 1965, when researchers were sent out to interview citizens of over 1,000 communities across the U.S., according to Hall. Over a five-year period, they collected thousands of words and detailed histories of their use.

Actually writing the dictionary began in 1975, and what was expected to take two years soon turned into a project still going on today.

Hall said the dictionary is an important tool to professionals across the country dealing with unfamiliar cultures and dialects on a daily basis.

“If you’re a doctor and you grow up here in Madison and then you set out to … someplace totally different, you might be confronted with patients who use totally different folk terms to describe their ailments,” Hall said.

As an example, Hall referenced a librarian in Tennessee who was once approached with a question about “dryland fish.” The librarian found no mention of the creatures in any of the library’s fish books but after consulting the DARE, found it to mean a mushroom in Tennessee.

University of Southern California professor Ed Finegan said in a recent DARE publication the dictionary has a variety of academic applications as well.

He uses the publication as a teaching tool, saying it offers an alternative to studying variation across ethnic and socioeconomic groups, which can be sensitive for some.

Looking forward, Hall said is the group will create one more volume, which will include supplementary data, before DARE moves on to the compilation of an online version.

“It’s been a long haul, but it’s been very exciting and satisfying,” Hall said. “It’s good to know the letter ‘z’ isn’t the end.”