The Dictionary of American Regional English is an historical dictionary of the regional and folk language of the United States. It is based on a wide range of sources, including a special project of nationwide fieldwork carried out from 1965–70. Special features are the extensive use of regional and social labelling, both of individual quotations and at the entry and sense level, and the inclusion of schematic maps based on the fieldwork. The dictionary was published by Harvard University Press in five volumes from 1985–2012, followed by a sixth volume of supplementary materials in 2013. Since the beginning of 2014 it has also been available in an online format embodying a corrected and enhanced version of the dictionary text, as well as a module that allows users to access the DARE survey data and to map selected responses. The online version is updated at intervals to incorporate new and revised entries.

Noah Webster’s first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806) was the first significant dictionary by an American. His blue-backed speller, The American Spelling Book (1783) was already, after the Bible, the most popular book ever published in America. So his authority and reputation on matters linguistic were already firmly established in the public mindset by the time he published An American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828. It became a blueprint for how Americans might embrace their linguistic differences from Britain and use them to define a national identity. Webster’s dictionary beckoned a new era in national dictionaries beyond British shores. In addition, his lexicographic practice pioneered innovations in methodology that anticipated mainstream dictionary practice in twentieth-century America. This essay investigates Webster’s important contribution to English lexicography and the standardisation of American English, and compares it with the work of his competitor Joseph Worcester whose Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory English Dictionary (1830) sparked vehement accusations of plagiarism in what became known as ‘the dictionary wars’. The chapter highlights the contribution of other American lexicographers such as Isaac Funk and Edward L. Thorndike, Willian Dwight Whitney, William A. Craigie, Calvert Watkins, Mitford M. Mathews, Frederic G. Cassidy, and Philip Gove.