dialect in novels

[Duane Campbell]

On Sat, 24 Feb 2001 14:00:13 -0500 "Dennis R. Preston"
<preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU> writes:
>
> I'm always yukkin it up up here to Michigan when they call them
> little critters crayfish.

"Critters" is an interesting word. Entymologists commonly refer to the
things they study as critters, and they do this because it is actually
more precise than words that a layman might use and might sound more
scholarly. So, for example, a gardener might refer to all those things
eating his flowers and vegetables as "bugs". But to an entymologist a bug
is a specific class of insects. A Japanese beetle is NOT a bug. Similarly
to a lay person insects are bugs and beetles and spiders and such. But an
entymologist knows that spiders are not insects. To get around the
problem, they usually call the whole group of such things "critters."
even in rather formal venues.

D