14 Things Arizonans Say That Baffle Everyone Else

A tourist eases a rental car around the orange barricade blocking a flooded wash outside Tucson.

Twenty minutes later, the driver is standing on the roof, waiting on a swift-water rescue crew and a bill from the fire department.

Arizona has a name for that mistake, and a vocabulary to match.

These are the words and phrases Arizonans say that baffle everyone else.

1. The Valley

Ask someone in Phoenix where they spent the weekend, and “the Valley” comes out of their mouth before any actual place name does.

Arizona’s capital sits inside the Salt River Valley.

By the 1930s, an Arizona Republic ad manager named Charles Stauffer had branded the whole area the Valley of the Sun.

The short version stuck harder than the long one.

One word.

Ask a visitor where they’re staying, and they’ll name a hotel.

Ask someone from Phoenix, Scottsdale, or Mesa the same question, and they’ll just say the Valley, as if the whole metro area shared one address.

2. It’s a Dry Heat

Arizonans deliver this line with a straight face at 112 degrees, and they mean every word of it.

The joke traces back further than most people guess.

Researcher Barry Popik found versions of the “dry heat” defense in print as far back as the 1870s.

A 1999 joke book crowned it Arizona’s unofficial state motto.

Nobody’s kidding, either.

Low humidity does make triple digits easier on the body than the same number would feel on the Gulf Coast, so the line isn’t just talk.

3. Zonie

Drive an Arizona plate into a California beach town in July, and somebody local might mutter this word under their breath.

“Zonie” started as a jab from Californians annoyed by the summer crowd of Arizonans fleeing the heat for the coast.

Not an insult anymore.

Arizonans took the word back.

Many now wear it with pride, printed on hats and bumper stickers across the state.

4. Monsoon

Arizona treats monsoon as a fixed date on the calendar, not a weather pattern that shows up whenever it feels like it.

The National Weather Service pins the season to June 15 through September 30 every year, regardless of when the first storm rolls through.

That confuses newcomers expecting a season that behaves like the word does everywhere else in the world.

Some years, the Valley waits until July for the first storm.

The calendar doesn’t care.

It already started.

5. Haboob

A wall of dust a mile high rolled over Phoenix on July 5, 2011.

That storm is why most residents now know this word at all.

Meteorologists had used “haboob” since the 1970s.

But the 2011 storm turned it into a household term, viral photos included.

Not everyone welcomed the word.

Letters poured into the Arizona Republic complaining that an Arabic term didn’t belong in a Phoenix weather report.

Meteorologists pointed out that English already borrows many foreign words.

The name stuck anyway.

Newcomers just hear an unfamiliar word for a wall of dust rolling straight at them.

6. The Wash

Arizonans call a dry streambed a wash.

For most of the year, it looks like nothing more than a ditch full of gravel and creosote.

Then monsoon season hits.

That same wash can carry a wall of water within minutes of a storm miles away.

Flash floods build fast in a wash.

A storm over the mountains can send water racing through a dry channel long before a single drop falls where you’re standing.

Locals check the sky upstream before they cross a wash.

Visitors usually don’t think to.

7. Stupid Motorist Law

Arizona gave its own traffic law a nickname blunt enough that everybody remembers it.

Officially, it’s Arizona Revised Statute 28-910.

It lets a county bill a driver who steers around a barricade into a flooded wash for the cost of the rescue that follows.

The tab can run past $2,000.

Rescue first.

Maricopa and Pima counties have both said they won’t hold back a swift-water crew just to make a point about a bill.

They save the person, then send the paperwork.

8. Javelina

A javelina trots through a Tucson backyard most nights.

Many newcomers who spot the animal call it a wild pig.

Wrong family entirely.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department lists javelinas as collared peccaries, cousins of pigs but a different species that split off millions of years ago.

The word itself trips people up, too.

Say it "hah-vuh-LEE-nuh," not "juh-vuh-LEE-nuh," and a local will know you've done your homework.

They travel in packs.

They're not shy about a garden, either.

9. Cholla

Arizonans warn hikers about cholla the way other states warn about poison ivy.

Say it "choy-ya," not "CHOL-uh," or a local will correct you before you finish the word.

The nickname is jumping cholla.

It earns the name honestly.

The cactus doesn't leap.

Its barbed segments detach at the lightest brush of a sleeve or a dog's tail.

The fishhook-barbed spines make them miserable to pull back out.

Give it room.

10. Saguaro

Say "sah-GWAR-oh" around a longtime Arizonan.

You'll get a gentle correction toward "suh-WAH-roh" instead.

No rushing this cactus.

A saguaro can take 50 to 75 years to grow its first arm, according to the National Park Service.

Some never grow an arm at all.

Arizona's Native Plant Law makes it illegal to cut down, dig up, or move a saguaro without a state permit, on public or private land alike.

Locals treat a saguaro like a neighbor, not a prop for a photo.

11. Sonoran Dog

Order "a dog" in Tucson.

You might get handed something wrapped in bacon, split open, and buried in beans.

The Sonoran hot dog crossed the border from Hermosillo in the 1970s and took over Tucson's streets, sold from carts by vendors called dogueros.

Bacon-wrapped, grilled, and stuffed into a soft bolillo roll.

Pinto beans, onions, tomatoes, and a swipe of mayo and jalapeño salsa finish it off.

Ask for ketchup.

Don't be surprised if the cart owner hesitates.

Not in Tucson.

12. The Old Pueblo

Tucson goes by a nickname that predates the city's modern skyline by two centuries.

Spanish colonists built the walled Presidio San Agustín del Tucson in 1775.

Locals later named the settlement for that old adobe wall, calling it the Old Pueblo.

A 1920s tourism group leaned into the nickname to lure snowbirds and health seekers south.

It worked.

People still call Tucson the Old Pueblo today, long after the wall itself came down.

13. Bear Down

University of Arizona fans shout this phrase at every game.

The story behind it stops many outsiders cold.

Student body president John "Button" Salmon was critically injured in a car crash near Florence in October 1926.

His last message to the team, delivered through his coach, was simple.

"Tell the team to bear down."

Salmon died days later.

The student body adopted his words as a rallying cry the next year.

Wildcats fans have carried it ever since.

Not just a cheer.

14. Flag

Ask a local how far it is to Flagstaff.

You'll probably hear it called just "Flag" instead.

Easier to say.

The shortened name skips right past the city's mouthful of nicknames, which include the City of Seven Wonders, named for the Grand Canyon, Oak Creek Canyon, and the other landmarks ringing the town.

Even the city's own paper has argued over what to call its residents.