COLUMNISTS If you are ever unfortunate enough to go into delirium tremens in the state of Maryland, there may still be people around who describe your predicament as “maniportia”, from the Latin mania a potu. Or so we gather from the monumental Dictionary of American Regional English, which scholars have been compiling, in one way or another, since 1917.
The book is beloved of columnists and autodidacts. It was based on an implausibly ambitious linguistic research project, which sent dozens of scholars travelling to more than 1,000 American locales. Unfortunately, it only goes up to the middle of the letter S.
