Bizmaroon, doodinkus and splo.

For over 50 years, a group of intrepid lexicographers have been documenting words like these regional terms and phrases that were once popular in states like Wisconsin, Kansas and Tennessee. Collected together in the Dictionary of American Regional English , the words make up a fascinating repository for old-fashioned, funny-sounding and unmistakably local language quirks across the United States.

But the six-volume compendium might soon be coming to an end.

DARE began with a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor named Frederic Cassidy. In 1962, he became chief editor of a project dedicated to American dialects, and from 1965 to 1970, he oversaw a team of 80 fieldworkers who traveled the country surveying thousands of English speakers and the regional sayings they held dear. From 1970 until 2013, experts in Madison used the massive amounts of survey data gathered to create an impressive, 60,000-entry dictionary now run by people like longtime DARE editors Joan Hall and George Goebel. Existing in both physical and digital form , the dictionary logs words including bluebird weather (in Maryland, it means a brief period of warm weather in autumn) and slushburger (to South Dakotans, a sloppy joe), as well as phrases like I hope to my die (used to make a strong assertion in Kentucky) and inso (a contraction meaning Isnt that so? Dont you agree? in Wisconsin).

While non-regional slang words spread like wildfire across the internet now , DARE is a lovely reminder that colloquialisms were once and still are, in some cases bound to the people and places of localized areas. Even if weve long forgotten that bizmaroon is a term for a bullfrog, doodinkus means gadget and splo is a stand-in for liquor, they remain a part of our countrys rich oral history. One of the dictionarys primary functions today is, according to Hall, to combat the idea that language has been homogenized by present-day media and a hyperconnected population, and preserve the dialect that sets us all apart along the way.