(from the jacket): Over 5,000 terms and expressions! The revised and expanded edition of the Dictionary of the American West includes words brought into English by cowboys, fur trappers, emigrants, Native peoples, Hispanics, Mormons, miners, loggers, Russian hid hunters, migrant workers, Alaskan fishermen, and others. Ranging from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California, it embraces the full West in all of its cultural richness.  So history, language and culture buffs, dig in! Anyone who loves language will revel in the thousands of words, stories and lore found in this uncommon resource a dictionary which honors the colorful history of the West and brings the region's present day to vivid life.

For some time now Win Blevins has had a bone to pick with the media.

While Win's dictionary stands as a testament for his love for words, his heart is in the novels. In fact his favorite piece of clothing is not suit and tie, but a tee shirt. On the front is printed, MEMBER OF THE WORLDS OLDEST PROFESSION, and on the back, STORYTELLER.

Since 1972, Win Blevins has authored thirteen books, including Give Your Heart to the Hawks, Stone Song (winner of the Spur Award and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award), and The Rock Child. Additionally, he has sold four screenplays and writes oodles of small pieces for newspapers and magazines. He is also a consulting editor for TOR/Forge Books and lives in Canyonlands, Utah.

This man of Irish, Welsh, and Cherokee blood says he had always wanted to be a writer. Perhaps his background influenced his decision. He describes himself as: the child of two great wars, unprecedented prosperity, and the social revolutions of the 60s and 70s. My truest literary models were probably the story-telling styles of my family, the Bible, and the preachers of my childhood and adolescence.

Blevins adds, I address my tales not to those who think themselves high-mindedcritics, professors, and minimalistsbut to the hearts, senses, emotions, imaginations, and spirits of everyone in the human community. I believe that storytelling froths with joy, healing, and brotherhood. It is not the publishing I love, or the attention, or the modest income, but the writing itself. I will keep going as long as I have voice.

So, where does he come from? What are his roots?

I came from Arkansas fundamentalists, and had to run from that, he says. I ran to colleges and took a decade to discover that colleges grow critics, not artists; quit before being cursed by a Ph. D. So Im mostly self-taught, with the strengths and weaknesses that come from that. I subscribe to the dictum, Leap and the net will appear.

From his strengths come a very deep passion for the language of the American West, first sparked during his study of mountain men.

"Of the great kinds of Western characters, I discovered mountain men first, and was fascinated by the way they talked," says Blevins. "A trapper would mix backwoods American talk (he was likely a Kentuckian or Virginian) with French-Canadian words (he was taught the ways of the beaver by one of those mixed-bloods) with Spanish (he was hanging out in Taos) in a single sentence. Also, he had the expressions unique to his tradea man who's ignorant don't know what way the stick floats. One who's foolish is buffler-witted. The way to tell your friend to take care of himself is, mind your hair.

"I soon began to find that a way into a mountain man's mind, along with standing knee-deep in cold creeks, was his language. His outlook on life revealed itself was there.

"In writing the dictionary I discovered that this is more or less true of all Westerners. The key to the mind is the language. The vast and detailed language cowman developed about horses (for instance, the sheer number of words for bad mounts) tell us what was on his mind day in and dayout. The same is true for sheepherders, Mormons, and salmon fishermen."

Of course, putting a dictionary like this together is a feat unto itselfone that could not have been accomplished without the help of many, to whom Blevins offers his sincere gratitude. (The acknowledgment page reads like a Whos Who of Western authors.)

Thus, the dictionary is an invaluable tool for all. Especially for some big-city book editors who, being unfamiliar with words of our West-speak, often discount their value by simply striking a red line through them. The results, Blevins explains, can be somewhat entertaining, but also extremely frustrating from a western author's point of view.

I started writing this dictionary as an aide to editors of westerns at New York publishing houses. One wrote in the margin of a friend's book something like, 'I know buckskins get old and smelly and stiff, but I'll be damned if I think they can whinny and canter. Clearly, she didn't know that the terms indicates not only hide clothing but a color of horse.

Our westernisms are also very challenging to non-westerners. In this sense the dictionary can also act as a guide for newcomers.

Outsiders come to our country every summer and can't figure out what's happening," Blevins explains. "If they're told to 'go along the bench to the forks and walk up the left-hand coulee to the divide,' they'll surely get lost. They don't understand simply because they haven't had our experience. Not knowing how difficult badlands are to cross, they must be told. In the same way most white westerners haven't had the experience of living on a reservation, so they don't know what a rez rat is, are how it feels to be rezzed out.

This second edition of the Dictionary of the American West is really quite a unique treasure in that it covers a number of new elements that hadn't been dealt with before.

Says Blevins, One of the main purposes of the first edition of the Dictionary was to reach beyond what such lexicons generally covered, which was cowboy talk. So I made a point of including mountain men, emigrants, bullwhackers, Mormons, gold-rushers, sheepherders, backpackers, river-runners, the folk of government agencies, and so on in a generous way. In the second edition I've gone further: Alaska is included, and turns out to be rich with terms from Russian, Eskimo, and Indian languages. More emphasis is given to words of the Pacific Northwest and California also, especially modern words. And a lot of the talk of contemporary Indian people is included.

From those words, his personal favorite is Indian pidgin English, a simple language that allowed whites and Indians to communicate.

Since white and red folks didnt have a language in common, they developed a simple one. It continued to develop through translators who tried to tell white officials what Indian leaders were saying. Great white father is an example. Others are big medicine, moccasin, buffalo soldier, moon when it means month. Its mostly antiquated now. Certainly Indian people dont use most of it.

The words he discovered in use on modern Indian reservations are also a treasure. Its fascinating, terms like apple: red on the outside, white on the inside; ocean water: hair spray agitated with water, providing a cheap high; snag: a date after the powwow; commod bod: the shape you get from eating government-issued commodities; Schmoehawk: an Anglo who passes himself off as an Indian to make money; and forty-niner song: mostly blues about being Red. These words are pan-Indian, not limited to a few reservations.

Blevins also saw fit to include many words from Spanish. Because theyre in English now. Even the K-marts use the word bienvenido over the PA. Near the border, we also have Spanglish, what linguists call a bilingual dialect, having a Mexican vocabulary and English syntax.

In the books introduction, Blevins also touches upon racist versus respectful language. Its tricky. Most of us want to be respectful, but we dont want the wool pulled over our eyes. I give some guidelines and discuss some controversial words in the intro. I also included in the dictionary, humorously, the unflattering names Indian people have for Anglos. Thats a two-way street, after all.

Read some examples from the Dictionary of the American West.