10 Georgia Sayings That Confuse Everyone Else

A tourist pulls into a Macon gas station and asks the clerk for the fastest way north.

She answers in what sounds like a foreign language built from familiar words.

He nods, thanks her, and drives off with no clue what she just told him.

These are the Georgia sayings that turn a simple exchange into a puzzle for everybody else.

OTP and ITP

Ask a native of Atlanta where they live, and the answer often starts with two letters instead of a neighborhood.

OTP means outside the Perimeter.

ITP means inside it.

The Perimeter is Interstate 285, the highway loop that circles the city.

ITP wraps in walkable areas like Midtown and Decatur.

OTP stretches out to suburbs like Marietta and McDonough.

It’s basically a border.

Tell a friend who lives ITP that you just bought a place OTP near Alpharetta, and you’ll get a look.

What’ll Ya Have?

Walk up to the counter at The Varsity in Atlanta, and a cashier fires off “What’ll ya have?” before you reach the register.

The chili dogs have been coming out since 1928.

Order a naked dog, and you’ll get a plain hot dog with nothing on it.

Ask for an F.O., and a frosted orange shake lands in your hand.

A steak isn’t steak at all, just a burger with ketchup, mustard, and pickles.

The place calls itself the world’s largest drive-in restaurant, with parking for hundreds of cars.

Nothing means what it says.

The Gnat Line

Georgians talk about living “below the gnat line” as if it marks a real spot on the map because it nearly does.

The line follows the state’s fall line, the geological seam that runs through Columbus, Macon, and Augusta.

South of it, gnats breed in the sandy soil and swarm your face all summer.

North of the seam, you get red clay and rolling hills. South of it, the land flattens into a sandy coastal plain.

Bring bug spray.

A native of Valdosta shrugs the swarm off, while a visitor from Michigan spends the whole picnic swatting.

Vidalia

Say “Vidalia” anywhere in Georgia, and people picture a sweet onion long before the small town it’s named for.

By law, an onion can carry the Vidalia name only when farmers grow it in a defined stretch of South Georgia.

The 1986 Vidalia Onion Act drew those boundaries around Toombs County and its neighbors.

Truckloads head to grocery stores each spring, when the fresh crop comes in.

The sweetness comes from the low-sulfur soil, not from added sugar.

No sulfur, no bite.

Georgia liked it enough to name it the official state vegetable in 1990.

Spaghetti Junction

Tell an Atlanta driver you got stuck at Spaghetti Junction, and they’ll wince in sympathy.

The nickname belongs to the Tom Moreland Interchange, where Interstate 85 crosses Interstate 285 in a tangle of ramps.

From above, the overlapping roads look like a dropped plate of pasta.

Nobody merges calmly there.

Traffic researchers have ranked it among the worst truck bottlenecks in the country.

OutKast name-checked it, and the movie Baby Driver staged a chase through it.

Ask for it by its official name, and half of Gwinnett County won’t know what you mean.

Go Dawgs

Yell "Go Dawgs" anywhere near Athens, and a crowd answers "Sic 'em" without missing a beat.

The Dawgs are the University of Georgia Bulldogs, and the call runs on autopilot every fall.

Fans write it "Dawgs," never "Dogs."

Spelling is loyalty here.

A live English bulldog named Uga has patrolled the sideline for decades, and fans treat him like royalty.

On game day, the field between the hedges at Sanford Stadium turns Athens into one roaring crowd.

Wear the wrong shade of red to a tailgate, and someone will politely set you straight.

Coke

In Georgia, "coke" can mean any soft drink, which fits the state where Coca-Cola was born.

A pharmacist named John Pemberton mixed the first batch in Atlanta in 1886.

The company still runs its headquarters in downtown Atlanta.

So when a Georgian asks what kind of coke you want, the answer might be Sprite or Dr Pepper.

A category, not a brand.

In Columbus, a waitress won't blink when a table orders four cokes and names four different flavors.

GRITS

Order grits in Georgia, and you'll get creamy ground corn under your eggs.

But call a woman a GRITS, and you've handed her a compliment.

GRITS stands for Girls Raised In The South, a badge many Georgia women wear with pride.

Same word, two meanings.

The food shows up at any diner, from a Waffle House in Marietta to a fish camp on the coast.

Georgians argue over whether to fix them with butter, cheese, or a pile of shrimp.

The nickname shows up on bumper stickers and coffee mugs across the state.

Buggy

Grab a cart at the Kroger in Athens or the Publix in Savannah, and a Georgian calls it a buggy.

You don't push a shopping cart.

You push a buggy.

Kids climb in for a ride while parents stack groceries around them.

It's never a cart.

A transplant from Chicago asks an employee where the shopping carts are and gets pointed toward the buggies.

Newcomers trip over the word every single time.

Bless Your Heart

In Georgia, "bless your heart" sounds like pure sympathy.

Sometimes it is.

Other times, it's a gentle way to call you a fool.

The person's tone tells you which.

Say something clueless at a dinner party in Savannah, and the host might bless your heart while smiling sweetly.