Editor's Corner

Today is day two for region-specific U.S. terms, from Merriam-Webster. If you missed the first five, they are here.

doorwall

Definition Michigan: a sliding glass door

One might imagine that a compound word such as doorwall, comprised as it is of two extremely common elements, would be in widespread use from sea to shining sea. One would be wrong in this case. Evidence of doorwall being used for sliding glass doors comes almost exclusively from Michigan, aka The Mitten State, The Wolverine State, Water-Winter Wonderland.

spendy

Definition Pacific Northwest: expensive

While spendy is gaining (cough) currency as a word to describe someone who tends or is inclined to spend, we currently define a single sense, used chiefly in the Northwestern United States, synonymous with expensive.

redd

Definition: Western Pennsylvania: to set in order (usually used with up or out) or to make things tidy (usually used with up).

We initially aimed for all of the words in this article to represent a different part of the country, but yinz will forgive us for including a second western Pennsylvania term. The verb redd, used chiefly in the dialect in and around Pittsburgh, comes from Scots (specifically that used in the Northern Ireland province of Ulster) and is thought to be perhaps an alteration of ridden. Redd can take an object, usually with up or out (as in “redd out the drawers”) or not.

croker sack

Definition South: a sack of coarse material (such as burlap)

Okay, so maybe burlap sacks aren’t the most glamorous material objects in the world. But what if we called them croker sacks? Still no? Okay, we tried, but croker sack is an interesting and fairly unsung Southern regionalism. The word is an alteration of crocus sack or crocus bag, and first appeared in print in the late 1800s, with crocus referring not to the familiar spring-blooming flower, but to burlap, being the Jamaican word for that material.

gumbo

Definition Montana: a heavy sticky mud

The word gumbo is of Bantu origins, related to the Umbundu word ochinggômbo, meaning “okra.” In addition to sometimes being used synonymously with okra, gumbo most often refers to a soup thickened with okra pods or filé (the powdered young leaves of sassafras). The viscosity of gumbo has led the word gumbo to also take on the meaning in parts of the interior U.S., including Montana, of “a fine-grained silty soil that when wet becomes impervious and soapy or waxy and very sticky” and more broadly “a heavy sticky mud.”

I hope these little tidbits help when you’re visiting other states! You definitely don’t want to go to Montana and offer your new neighbors a bowl of gumbo for dinner, or run into a doorwall because it is too clean from redding up the living room for guests!

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Knowledge Enablement

Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com

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