Ohio slang: regional words, sayings, and how locals talk.
This page collects regional vocabulary from Ohio: 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 Ohio picture.
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The grass strip between sidewalk and street (Akron, OH).
Pittsburgh: '(it) needs washed', no 'to be'.
Using 'anymore' to mean 'these days'.
A thin, Mediterranean-spiced meat sauce ladled over spaghetti or hot dogs, ordered by 'ways'.
A soft white bread roll baked around sticks of pepperoni, West Virginia's state food.
Bands of intense snow off the Great Lakes.
Courtesy left turn taken before oncoming traffic when a light turns green.
Indirect left turn made by going straight, U-turning, then turning right.
Ohio is a Midwest crossroads where Northern and Midland speech meet, so its vocabulary mixes. A soft drink is "pop", a vacuum cleaner is sometimes a "sweeper", and Akron is famous for the "devil strip" — the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street, a word found almost nowhere else. "Ope" punctuates the polite Midwestern bump-and-excuse, "you guys" is the plural you, and "the" precedes the state university. Flat, friendly, and quietly regional, Ohio English rewards a close listen.
Ohio slang includes "pop" for soft drinks, "sweeper" for a vacuum cleaner, the Akron-specific "devil strip" (the grass between sidewalk and curb), and the very Midwestern "ope". Northern and southern Ohio speech differ subtly.
The "devil strip" is the narrow strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. The term is famously specific to Akron, Ohio, and once helped identify a speaker in a real forensic-linguistics case.
Most of Ohio says "pop" for a carbonated soft drink, though the Cincinnati area in the southwest leans toward "soda" or "coke", reflecting its more Southern-influenced speech.
