9 Things Wyomingites Say That Baffle Everyone Who Visits

Ask a Wyoming rancher for directions outside Pinedale, and get ready to nod like every word made sense.

These are the things Wyomingites say that baffle out-of-staters who visit.

1. Rocky Mountain Oysters

Ranch cooks fry up Rocky Mountain oysters every spring at branding time, and the name gives a visitor no useful information about what’s on the plate.

They’re bull testicles, skinned, sliced, breaded, and fried.

Not seafood.

Ranchers castrate cattle during branding season every spring.

Generations of families turned the leftover into a fried dish rather than waste it, a tradition Wyoming Public Media still covers as a point of local pride.

The county fair menu board still just says “oysters,” no clarification offered.

2. Dew-Boyz

The town of Dubois carries a French name, and almost nobody who lives there says it the French way.

Visitors show up ready to pronounce it doo-BWAH, and locals correct them before they finish the sentence.

Locals pronounce it DEW-boyz instead, stress on the first syllable.

The mispronunciation is deliberate.

The town wanted the name Tibo, a Shoshone word for stranger, but the U.S. Postal Service rejected it.

Wyoming's governor named the settlement after an Idaho senator instead, a slight residents have never let go of, according to Cowboy State Daily.

The French pronunciation never stood a chance against a governor's grudge.

3. Vedauwoo

Wyoming's Vedauwoo rock formations sit between Laramie and Cheyenne, and the name trips up almost every visitor who tries to read it off a trailhead sign.

Visitors say it the way it's spelled: VEE-da-WOO.

Residents say VEE-da-VOO instead, the stress landing on the last syllable, a pronunciation Wyoming Public Media has documented for years.

One folk explanation ties the name to an Arapaho phrase, bito'o'wu, meaning earth-born.

Climbers who show up for the granite domes usually leave still saying it wrong.

4. Greenies

Wyoming locals call Colorado visitors "greenies," a nickname that has stuck since Colorado issued license plates in a distinctive shade of green.

Fishing guides and outfitters use it constantly through the summer.

It cuts both ways.

The word captures a genuine tension.

Colorado visitors spend money in Wyoming towns, and they also crowd the same rivers and trailheads locals grew up having to themselves.

Wyoming Humanities describes the mix as equal parts economic gift and encroachment.

No Wyomingite has ever answered to it.

5. Gumbo

Dirt roads turn into "gumbo" after a hard rain, and the word has nothing to do with a Louisiana stew.

Gumbo is the sticky, waxy clay that grabs a tire and won't let go.

There's no warning first.

Drive through it, and the mud packs into the wheel wells until the tires stop turning.

Locals keep chains and a shovel in the truck for exactly this reason.

No dinner involved, just a truck that isn't moving.

6. The Hole

Locals in western Wyoming shorten Jackson Hole to "the Hole" in everyday conversation, and first-time visitors usually assume they misheard.

Asking how long somebody's lived in the Hole is a completely normal question around Jackson.

It isn't a canyon or a cave.

Early trappers called any high mountain valley ringed by peaks a hole.

The name stuck to this one long after the trapping era ended, a usage the Jackson Hole Chamber still tracks in visitor guides.

Many locals skip "Hole" altogether and just say Jackson.

7. Tourons

Local news coverage of Yellowstone calls a certain kind of visitor a "touron," and the word means nothing to the person it's aimed at until somebody explains it.

Touron blends "tourist" and "moron."

Cowboy State Daily reaches for the word constantly, describing the latest "touron" of the day as a recurring news category.

Much of the material comes from Yellowstone, which draws between 4.5 and 4.8 million visitors a year.

A first-time visitor has no idea the word describes them.

The word gets fresh material every tourist season.

8. Game and Fish

Wyoming's state wildlife agency calls itself the Game and Fish Department, and visitors from other states expect the words in the opposite order.

Many wildlife agencies elsewhere go by Fish and Game or Fish and Wildlife.

Refer to Wyoming's wildlife agency as Fish and Game in front of a game warden, and expect a correction on the spot.

It isn't just pride.

The department has printed Game and Fish on its trucks, signs, and licenses out of its headquarters in Cheyenne for generations, and nobody's proposing a rebrand.

9. Pokes

Sports fans yell "Go Pokes!" for University of Wyoming teams, and the word baffles somebody who has never set foot in the state.

Poke is short for cowpoke, an old term for a ranch hand.

Wyomingites adopted it as a statewide nickname for the university's Cowboys.

Not everybody gets the reference.

License plate frames, bumper stickers, and bar chants all carry the word across the state, decades after the nickname first caught on.