Georgia slang: regional words, sayings, and how locals talk.
This page collects regional vocabulary from Georgia: slang you'll hear in conversation, sayings that travel through families, and pronunciations that mark a person as a local. Pick a city to narrow the list, or keep "All cities" to see the full Georgia picture.
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Sympathy on the surface, often condescending or passive-aggressive.
The coastal plain of South Carolina and Georgia.
South Carolina: green peanuts simmered in salty water.
South Carolina Lowcountry: shrimp, sausage, corn and potato boil.
Carolinas: a deep-fried ball of cornmeal batter.
A sweet yellow onion that, by federal law, can only be grown in 20 designated counties of southeast Georgia.
Affectionate (and slightly dated) nickname for Atlanta, riffing on its summer heat and nightlife.
A western North Carolina loaf of pork liver, head meat, and cornmeal, sliced and fried.
Local nickname for a tangled multi-level freeway interchange.
Atlanta shorthand for I-285, the highway ringing the city.
Georgia runs from the Deep South drawl of its small towns to the fast urban slang of Atlanta, a national engine of hip-hop vocabulary. Statewide you get "y'all", "fixin' to", "bless your heart", "coke" for any soft drink, and a "buggy" at the store. Atlanta adds its own geography of speech: "OTP" and "ITP" (outside and inside the Perimeter, I-285), "the A" for the city itself, and slang that spreads outward from its music. Old South and new South share the same state.
Georgia slang ranges from Deep South staples — "y'all", "fixin' to", "bless your heart", "coke" for any soft drink, "buggy" — to Atlanta's urban vocabulary, including "OTP"/"ITP" (outside/inside the I-285 Perimeter) and "the A" for the city.
"ITP" means inside the Perimeter (the I-285 loop around Atlanta) and "OTP" means outside it. The phrases double as shorthand for an urban-versus-suburban identity.
In Georgia and much of the South, "coke" is the generic term for any carbonated soft drink. You may be asked "what kind of coke?" and answer "a Sprite".
