Massachusetts slang: regional words, sayings, and how locals talk.
This page collects regional vocabulary from Massachusetts: 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 Massachusetts picture.
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New England: a powerful coastal storm from the northeast.
Sandwich of peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff on white bread.
Newport Creamery's thick ice-milk shake; Rhode Island's signature milkshake.
Coastal cyclone hammering the Atlantic seaboard.
New England term for the highway shoulder.
Massachusetts shorthand for I-90, the Massachusetts Turnpike.
To make a U-turn while driving.
Massachusetts speech is dominated by the Boston accent — the most famous r-dropping in America ("pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd") — but the vocabulary matters as much as the sound. "Wicked" intensifies everything ("wicked smart"), a milkshake is a "frappe", a drinking fountain is a "bubbler", a sandwich is a "grinder", and the liquor store is the "packie". The rotary (not the roundabout) and the directional "the Cape" round out a dialect that locals wear with pride.
The Boston accent is the best-known feature of Massachusetts English: non-rhotic speech that drops post-vowel r ("car" → "cah") and broadens certain vowels. It pairs with local vocabulary like "wicked", "frappe", "bubbler", and "packie".
In Massachusetts and New England, "wicked" means "very" or "really" — "wicked good", "wicked tired". It is an intensifier with no negative meaning.
A "packie" is a package store — a liquor store. "Stop at the packie" is everyday Massachusetts speech.
