We named most of the regions in America after the cardinal directions. There's the West, the South, and the East. Yet there's no North, is there? You never hear somebody from Indiana or Wisconsin saying, "I'm from the North." Only characters from Game of Thrones say that.
We call the North Central states the Midwest. And the Midwest is a special place: with its Great Lakes, gently rolling hills and plains, and its famous sayings and phrases. It's so special, in fact, that there's a meme page dedicated to it, titled "Midwest Vs. Everybody." So, here's a selection of a few we think you might like, even if you're not a Midwesterner yourself.
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You might think you know where the Midwest is, but, turns out, it's a pretty subjective question. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 12 states in the American Midwest. They include Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
However, in a 2023 poll by the University of Nebraska and Emerson College, the people living in Oklahoma and Wyoming also said they think of themselves as Midwesterners. The most Midwestern state, according to the poll, turned out to be Iowa. 96.7% of the people there think of themselves as Midwesterners.
And in Ohio, which the U.S. Census Bureau officially counts as part of the Midwest, only 73.8% of the respondents said they "live in the Midwest."
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As Jon K. Lauck, editor of Middle West Review, notes, there are nuances to what is the Midwest. "The western parts of the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas are sort of the West. The southern tier of counties in Ohio, are Appalachia.
"The southern half of Missouri is quite southern. So there are some nuances it's important to take notice of. That's what the historians and social scientists involved in Midwestern history are sorting out and making more clear," he explained.
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But wait a minute, what does "west" even have to do with this region? Isn't this technically the center of America, in between the West and the East Coast regions? Well, the term "Midwest" comes from the time when all the territories west of the Mississippi but in between the North and South were considered the West.
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Some claim that you'll know the Midwest when you see it. As Jacob K. Friefeld, a research historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum writes, "People may not agree on where to find the Midwest, but they generally agree on what you'll find there."
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And the idea of the Midwest in most Americans' minds is one of a pastoral paradise. A simple place where everyone knows their neighbors and farm fields sprawl as far as the eye can see. That's why people call it the Heartland of America: it helped form the agricultural and economic foundation that the country is built on.
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But being from the Midwest is not just about geography. Being a Midwesterner is a cultural identifier too. Many say that state fairs are the quintessential part of the American Midwest. In 2015, USA Today named the Minnesota State Fair as the very best, with Iowa taking second place.
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Then there's the food, like the classic Midwest hotdish. Although it's the unofficial state cuisine of Minnesota, you can find different iterations of hotdish in other Midwestern states as well. There are three main components in a hotdish: starch, protein, and vegetable. Food blogger Molly Yeh, who now lives in North Dakota, describes the hotdish like this: "If you were to place [the hotdish] on an x/y chart where x = how much it looks like barf, and y = how delicious it is, they would be maxed out on both accounts. That's the charm of a hotdish."
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Midwesterners also have some interesting phrases you probably wouldn't hear in other regions of the U.S. One of them is "Ope" which the "Midwest Vs. Everybody" page has in its title as well. People describe "Ope" in many different ways (and it rhymes with "rope," by the way), but essentially it's somewhat a mix of "oh" and "oops."
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Midwesterners say "Ope!" when they're surprised, when they want to squeeze past someone in line at the supermarket, or even when they accidentally spill wine on their or somebody else's shirt. Linguist Ben Zimmer explained to HuffPost that the word is a somewhat mix between "oops" and "welp." "It could also be thought of as the 'oh' interjection plus a final '-p,'" he explained.
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Have we got any Pandas from the Midwest here? Let us know in the comments if any of these identifiers fit the description of a Midwesterner. And if you're looking for more funny bits from the "Midwest Vs. Everybody" page, check out this article we did about their page back in 2021!
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