5 Local Michigan Slang Phrases That Every Visitor Should Know

Lookit, fudgey, if you're going to visit the Mitten, you've gotta learn the difference between your Yoopers and your Trolls, and know what someone means when they say they're heading "Up North." If you don't, expect to be told to "have a good one" before you take a Michigan left and go back where you came from. Most know Michigan for its beautiful lakes, with sandy beaches and kayaking havens. But first-time visitors may find themselves baffled by the local jargon. The Great Lake State's slang is rich with euphemisms, shorthand, cultural weight, and self-deprecating humor, and is a must-learn for every visitor.

In case you're already feeling out of the loop, the first sentence essentially says, "Listen, tourist, you should know the difference between Upper and Lower Peninsula residents and what Michiganders consider 'Up North,' or they'll wish you a good day before you have to U-turn out of there." That's just the start, though. Be prepared to discover why you'll be called a fudgey, and how to find a good party store.

Michigan's probably the one state that can slap your face. Locals are very aware of their state's open-handed silhouette and play it up whenever possible — especially in daily speech and geographic locations. The habit comes through in many ways, but perhaps the most enigmatic and ubiquitous is "Up North." This term means... well, it depends who you ask. Entire Reddit threads have devoted massive amounts of brainpower to delineating "Up North" Michigan from the rest of the state, to no avail. At best, it's a vibe, or shorthand for a bucolic, non-urban setting. It's also a source of clever retorts while simultaneously baffling outsiders. "This is the saying that continually confuses my German husband," one local wrote on Reddit. "Especially since I (and everyone we knew) would use it to mean 'going anywhere more than a two-hour drive in a Northern direction from where we live.'"

The geographic linguistic hijinks continue beyond local slang you can't type into your GPS. Michiganders also give each other bizarre nicknames based on where they live. A Yooper lives in the state's Upper Peninsula (Or U.P., hence Yooper — recognized by Merriam-Webster as a word). Trolls, by contrast, refers to Michiganders who live below the Mackinac Bridge, which connects the state's two appendages. The same border delineations apply to the state's unique shape. Locals themselves refer to the state as "The Mitten," also referring to the eastern part of the state as "the Thumb."

If you're lost, try describing your destination to a local. They won't ask you, "Where?" They'll ask, "Where at?" Once you decipher your destination, prepare to witness them using their hand as a map to show what part of the state you're in, and where you should be headed. Probably Up North.

Michiganders' knack for nicknaming everything extends beyond just locals. Out-of-towners visiting for the most famous local attraction have their own nicknames. Whereas Vermont has leaf peepers, Michigan has fudgies. The moniker is a shorthand for the sort of traveler who flocks to the state's world-class sweet treats and unforgettable chocolate. Michigan's vaunted cocoa-laced past stretches to the 1870s, when chocolatiers like May's Candy Shop and Gilbert Chocolates began putting The Mitten's U.P. on the sweetness map.

In that context, fudgies are tourists who arrive with one thing in mind: gorging themselves on sweets up and down the state, primarily "Up North" and on Mackinac Island, the state's secret beach town with no cars. Locals on the island have confirmed using the nickname for tourists. But, as with any other vice-based nickname, locals who also can't resist the state's chocolatey treats have also been called fudgies. So if a Yooper or Troll ever calls you a fudgey, assume it's all in good fun.

If asking someone a yes-no question and getting back a "maybe" drives you nuts, prepare yourself. Asking someone from Michigan a simple question will often yield an indefinite answer, no matter what. Want a slice of pizza? No, yeah. Want to stick a fork in an electrical outlet? Yeah, no. It tracks with Michiganders' stereotype as overly polite and conflict-avoidant, to the point where they seem to verbally waffle on everything. It has been dubbed by some as "West Michigan Nice," a geographic sibling to the ubiquitous "Minnesota nice" that courses the same cultural vein.

Through that lens, "yeah no" and "no yeah" are forms of verbal hedging. Michiganders give both responses in quick succession in the hopes that it waters down the perceived harm of the actual, final answer. Things become even more complicated when the self-contradiction piles on into an unholy tangle of yeah's and no's, like "no yeah no" or "yeah no for sure."

Here's a quick primer to save you the furrowed brows: The final word in the sequence is the actual response. "No, yeah" means "yes." Likewise, "Yeah, no" means "No." A "Yeah, no for sure," is an emphatic yes, the same way a "No, yeah, no" only emphasizes the negation. Got it? Yeah no yeah.

New York has its bodegas. Chicago has corner stores. The rest of America has convenience stores. In Michigan, if you need to make a quick restock ahead of a shindig, you head to the party store. If you're thinking of conical party hats, confetti, and glittering doodads, yeah no. Michiganders, their understated humility ever intact, call the local shop where you can grab a six-pack, or some sugary drinks, and a bag of nachos the party store. Because really, what more do you need for a party?

Michigan's definitions of "party" leaves an airfield's worth of space for interpretation, according to locals on Reddit, with plenty of iterations. One claimed Grand Rapids residents call graduation parties an "open house." This only makes the foggy definition of "party store" all the more logical. "As a lifelong Michigander, it goes like this: Small convenience stores are party stores or corner stores (selling alcohol is not a requirement)," one local wrote on Reddit. "If you put a gas pump at a party store, it becomes a gas station. And 7/11's are the only party stores you can call 7/11." There, of course, remains only one question: what to buy?

Locals swear by Vernor's, a hard-to-describe local pop (no yeah no, it's not a soda... it's pop, you fudgey) that Michiganders often first encountered as a pseudo-medicine capable of settling stomach ailments and pretty much anything else. The original, classic Vernor's tasted like a turbo-charged ginger ale with more spice. On the way home from the party store, grab some Superman ice cream, a red, blue, and yellow scoop of midwestern goodness that's hard to find in the rest of the U.S.

Looking for a place to soothe your grumbling stomach, with a craving for a hot dog thrown into the mix? Find a "Coney Island" (not the one in Brooklyn) and order a "coney." The two are effectively Michigan-ese for "diner" and a local take on the classic hot dog, respectively. Be sure to have some Michigan sauce on top. The chili sauce, a magical mix of ground beef and other fixings, is slopped across the frankfurter to transform it into a Coney. "We don't go to the 'diner' for breakfast or lunch, we go to the 'coney,'" one user wrote on Reddit. Like most things in Michigan, it seems there's some disagreement on the borders of "Coney" territory, with locals online claiming,yeah no, they never heard the term. The general consensus seems to suggest the lower eastern quadrant of the state, especially Detroit, has coneys. Far, far away from fudgey territory.

"I felt put on the spot one time when someone from out of state asked me to explain what a Coney Island was," one local wrote on Reddit. "I had never thought about it before. I was like, 'uuummm idk it's like where you get breakfast when you're drunk, and they have gyros and coney dogs n stuff.'"

Like all jargon, there's a bit of nuance. What does and doesn't meet the "coney" criteria often sparks debate. "All Coneys are diners, but not all diners are Coneys," one Michigander wrote on Reddit. As a fudgey, you're best off not putting in your two cents. Just enjoy the hot dogs.

The boundaries of a certain language or patois are always hard to define, with the Midwest being one of the more famous — or infamous — linguistic territories in the U.S. Finding five definitive Michigan-only phrases required a mass consultation with a wide swath of local media, as well as social personalities, and overall online chatter, all while blasting Eminem, Motown, and The MC5. Words or phrases that have a unique geographic tie to Michigan — like "fudgies," "yoopers," or "Up North" — cleared the biggest hurdle immediately. The list quickly grew to several dozen. It was then culled by removing jargon shared by a neighboring state, most often Minnesota. Afterward, the most frequent mentions on social media helped establish a top five (though there just as easily can be a top 20).