South Carolina slang: regional words, sayings, and how locals talk.
This page collects regional vocabulary from South Carolina: 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 South Carolina picture.
30 wordspage 1 of 2
Sympathy on the surface, often condescending or passive-aggressive.
The coastal plain of South Carolina and Georgia.
A creamy Charleston soup with crab meat and roe.
South Carolina: green peanuts simmered in salty water.
South Carolina: a one-pot stew of chicken, sausage and wet rice.
South Carolina Lowcountry: shrimp, sausage, corn and potato boil.
Carolinas: a deep-fried ball of cornmeal batter.
Carolinas: a Southern farewell inviting return.
The thick, dark, sulfur-smelling mud of the Lowcountry tidal marshes that you sink into at low tide.
In Charleston, the long side porch of a house, oriented to catch the breeze rather than a public square.
The classic Charleston house style that is one room wide with its narrow gable end facing the street and a piazza down the side.
A long, springy Lowcountry porch bench that bounces gently when you sit on it, traditionally painted Charleston green.
Charleston's nickname, earned by its skyline of many church steeples and long tradition of religious tolerance.
In Gullah Geechee speech of the Charleston area, the word for 'you' (especially 'you all'), from West African roots.
To eat, in Gullah Geechee speech of the Charleston Sea Islands, from West African languages.
South Carolina's most distinctive speech is the Lowcountry around Charleston and the Sea Islands, where the Gullah (Geechee) creole — born among descendants of enslaved West Africans — has shaped local English for centuries. Statewide you hear "y'all", "bless your heart", a "buggy" at the store, and to "cut on" or "cut off" the lights. Boiled peanuts are a roadside staple, the old Charleston accent has its own clipped vowels, and "the Lowcountry" names both the coastal region and a whole way of speaking and cooking.
South Carolina slang is Southern — "y'all", "bless your heart", "buggy" (cart), and "cut on/off the lights" — with the deepest distinctiveness in the Lowcountry, where Gullah creole has influenced vocabulary and rhythm for generations.
Gullah (or Geechee) is an English-based creole language spoken by descendants of enslaved West Africans in the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry and Sea Islands. It retains African vocabulary and grammar and has influenced wider Southern speech.
In South Carolina and much of the South, you "cut on" and "cut off" the lights rather than turning them on and off — "cut off the light when you leave".
