12 Things Bay Staters Say That Confuse the Rest of America

Say “wicked” outside Massachusetts, and most Americans picture a decades-old sitcom joke or something out of the Salem witch trials.

Both guesses are wrong.

These are the phrases that mark someone as a true Bay Stater, whether they grew up in Boston or out past Worcester.

1. Taking the Rotary

Drive almost anywhere in Massachusetts, and eventually a road sign points you toward a rotary instead of a roundabout.

It’s the same idea, just faster and far less polite.

The vehicle already inside the circle has the right of way, and everyone waiting to enter takes whatever gap opens up.

No one yields first.

Massachusetts has 118 of these traffic circles, including the Fresh Pond rotary in Cambridge, a tangle so notorious that one local driver summed it up for a reporter: “No one knows how to use them.”

A driver who hesitates at the entrance backs up the whole rotary behind them.

Bay Staters treat that hesitation, not the circle itself, as the real hazard.

2. Banging a Uey

Ask someone in Massachusetts for directions, and they might tell you to bang a uey at the next light.

That just means make a U-turn.

Locals use “bang a left” and “bang a right” the same way, turning almost any direction into a verb.

The turn happens before you finish the sentence.

An out-of-towner who hears “bang a uey at the rotary” for the first time usually just stops the car and asks for that again.

Regulars rattle the phrase off without slowing down because in Boston traffic, a few wasted seconds add up fast.

3. Stopping at the Packie

Send a Bay Stater out for beer before the cookout, and they’re just as likely to say they’re headed to the packie.

“Packie” is short for package store, the actual license category Massachusetts uses for any shop that sells sealed bottles to go.

It’s on the books, not just slang.

The word covers a converted gas station in Worcester just as easily as a family-run shop in Boston’s North End.

Ask directions to the “liquor store” in some towns, and someone will just point you toward the packie down the street.

The shelves never change, only the name people use for them.

4. Filling up at the Bubbler

Many kids in Massachusetts schools don’t ask for a drink of water.

They hit the bubbler.

The word means drinking fountain, and Massachusetts shares it with only a handful of states, mostly Wisconsin and Rhode Island.

Everywhere else, it’s just a fountain.

Eastern Massachusetts leans on “bubbler” hardest, from the North Shore down through Boston’s own suburbs.

Ask where the water fountain is at a Massachusetts summer camp, and a counselor points straight to the bubbler without missing a beat.

5. Pushing the Carriage

At a Market Basket or Stop & Shop in Massachusetts, shoppers push a carriage, not a shopping cart.

The wheels work exactly the same.

Southern shoppers push a “buggy.”

Eastern Massachusetts shoppers push a carriage instead, a word the Dictionary of American Regional English traced to a 1976 Boston Globe story about grocery shopping.

Connecticut shoppers say it too.

Ask a shopper from Colorado to grab a cart at a Massachusetts grocery store, and a cashier might correct them without thinking twice.

6. The Great Sub Debate

Order a sandwich on a long roll in Massachusetts, and the name changes depending on which part of the state you’re standing in.

Western and Central Massachusetts, out toward Springfield and Worcester, call it a grinder.

Older Italian American neighborhoods around Boston call the same sandwich a spuckie, a name with roots in Italian bread-making.

Cape Cod mostly skips both and just says sub.

Not one right answer.

A Bay Stater who grew up saying “spuckie” can still order a “grinder” without blinking on a trip out to the Berkshires because everyone already knows what’s coming to the counter.

7. Answering ‘So Don’t I’

Tell a Bay Stater you have a golden retriever, and they might answer, “So don’t I.”

They mean they have a golden retriever too.

It sounds like a flat denial, but in Massachusetts and across New England, it works as agreement, not disagreement.

A Yale linguist has spent years studying the construction, and he’s found it isn’t limited to “do” and “don’t.”

“So aren’t most nightclubs,” a New Englander might say about something trendy, meaning the exact opposite of what it sounds like.

Not a contradiction at all.

A transplant who hears the construction for the first time usually just stares because English grammar never said “don’t” could mean “do too.”

8. Calling It Wicked Good

Newcomers often guess that "wicked" means something sinister, left over from centuries of ghost tours.

That guess misses completely.

In Massachusetts, "wicked" works as an intensifier standing in for "very" or "extremely," and it only works with an adjective right behind it.

Say "wicked" alone, and a Bay Stater will wait for the rest of the sentence.

Merriam-Webster traces the intensifier to New England, not the whole country the way pop culture suggests.

One grammar rule, technically.

The Salem witch trial origin story is a myth, and most likely, "wicked" grew out of everyday words like "awful" and "terrible," with Bay Staters simply keeping the habit going longer than anyone else.

9. Ordering a Frappe

Order a "milkshake" in Massachusetts, and some older residents will hand you flavored milk with nothing frozen in it at all.

No ice cream involved.

The version with ice cream mixed in has its own name in New England, a frappe, pronounced "frap," not the French way.

Ask for a "frappe" almost anywhere outside New England, and most people picture a cold coffee drink instead of a milkshake.

Same word, completely different drink.

The mix-up runs deep enough that longtime shop owners in Massachusetts still specify "the ice cream kind" when an out-of-state visitor looks confused.

10. Calling Hosey

Watch two kids in Massachusetts race for the front seat, and one might yell "hosey" instead of "dibs."

Whoever says it first wins.

"Hosey" means claim it, and it works on the front seat, the last slice, or the good spot on the couch.

The word is common across New England, and even the language researchers who track it can't agree on exactly where it came from.

The mystery never stopped anyone from using it.

Many Bay Staters use both "hosey" and "dibs" in the same afternoon, switching without noticing.

11. Running to the Spa

Head into a corner store in neighborhoods like Brighton or Watertown, and a longtime local might call it "the spa."

Nobody is getting a massage.

The word for a corner or convenience store traces back to old New England soda fountains, the kind that once served fizzy drinks over ice long before soda came in cans.

One of the earliest known mentions, from an 1895 newspaper article, named a Boston soda counter "Thompson's Spa."

The soda fountains disappeared decades ago.

The word for the corner store that replaced them stuck around Greater Boston long after the rest of the country moved on.

12. Getting Storrowed

Every September 1, moving day floods Boston and Cambridge with rental trucks, and at least one driver always misjudges a bridge built for regular cars.

Storrow Drive's overpasses were never built for that height.

When a truck gets wedged under one anyway, Bay Staters call it storrowed.

It happens often enough that the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), which manages the parkway, issued a public warning about the height limits along the road.

Every single year.