Boston Slang: 25 Wicked Good Terms You Should Know

There are lots of things to love about Boston: Its history, its culture, its record-breaking sports teams. But as most will tell you, the city’s slang doesn’t always make the cut. Some terms are as tricky to master as that oh-so-fearsome Boston accent that has led so many actors astray. Want to blend in better while you’re in the Hub? Grab yourself a pint of Sam Adams Summer Ale, get Dropkick Murphys queued up on Spotify, and consider this your cheat sheet to coming off like you always belonged here. 

The Hub and Beantown

There’s no shortage of nicknames for Boston, but one of the most enduring is The Hub. It was coined in 1858 by writer Oliver Wendell Holmes in an essay for The Atlantic Monthly, where he wrote: “Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn’t pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar.” 

Though Holmes was actually calling out the city’s inhabitants for having an exaggerated sense of self-importance, the moniker occupies a soft spot in the hearts of many Bostonians, who now use it affectionately in reference to the city (and as a way to stick it to all the haters). 

The origins of Beantown, another divisive sobriquet, aren’t as clear: It could come from the city’s long love affair with baked beans or be a relic from the infamous “triangular trade,” wherein the city exchanged rum for enslaved people, who were then taken to sugar plantations in the Caribbean to produce sugar, molasses, and other cash crops. As molasses was a crucial ingredient in most baked bean recipes, it suggests there’s some truth to both explanations.

Dunks, The Pike, and Regular

Facing a long commute on the Pike (a.k.a., the Massachusetts Turnpike)? You might first want to swing by Dunks—short for Dunkin’, formerly known as Dunkin’ Donuts—to give yourself something to look forward to. Making a trip to your nearest chain is known as a Dunks run, and it’s basically a rite of passage in Boston, right up there with hate-watching The Departed. Just remember that if you ask for a “regular,” it means you’re getting cream and sugar in it. Also, don’t be surprised if you see folks ordering an iced coffee in the middle of winter. That just means they’re true New Englanders.

Masshole

A colorful portmanteau of Massachusetts and asshole, Masshole is a word for the caricature that usually comes to mind when folks think of the Bay State: Someone who drives too fast, drops their r’s, and has a potentially unhealthy obsession with the New England Patriots. 

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) officially recognized it in 2015 as “a term of contempt for a native or inhabitant of the state of Massachusetts,” but it’s been part of the New England lexicon for decades. In his 1989 book Warts and All, chronicling the 1988 presidential election, author Matt Ridley provided one of its earliest uses, writing: “The New Hampshire people have a nickname for the refugees from Massachusetts: Massholes.” 

Though some Bostonians consider it the ultimate insult—and may even hurl it as a pejorative at each other, often over something stupid done while driving—others wear the label like a badge of honor, hard-won with pride. 

Rotary

Nobody likes driving in circles, especially in the greater Boston area. Whether you’re trying to navigate Newton Corner during rush hour or get through all of Fresh Pond Parkway in one piece, most would rather skip the rotary, which is another word for roundabout in the Bay State.

Though they’re technically different—in rotaries, vehicles drive through large circular intersections at much higher speeds than roundabouts, and lanes aren’t always clearly marked—you’d be hard-pressed to find a Masshole who can fully explain the difference. 

Packie 

If your Pops has to run out for some smokes and another sixer, chances are he’s headed straight for the packie. According to Green’s Dictionary of Slang, the term—short for package store—has been another way of saying “liquor store” since the early 1970s.

Food historian Robert F. Moss, author of Southern Spirits: 400 Years of Drinking in the American South, claims the term is a holdover from the pre-Prohibition era when laws in certain states made it difficult for retailers to sell alcoholic beverages from out-of-state wholesalers. Booze had to be in its “original packaging,” i.e., in the same bottles or packages in which it was initially received. To counter this, retailers opened package stores wherein consumers could buy those “packages” directly, and in places like Massachusetts, the name just stuck. 

Fluffernutter

A staple in kids’ lunch boxes across the Bay State, a fluffernutter (pronounced “fluff-AH-nut-AH”) is a spin on the classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Instead of using jelly, combine peanut butter with Marshmallow Fluff on white bread for a snack that’s as sweet as it is stomachache-inducing.

Both the sandwich and marshmallow creme were invented in Massachusetts in the late 1910s. Emma Curtis is credited with popularizing the sandwich recipe during World War I, calling it a “Liberty Sandwich.” (The name fluffernutter only emerged in the 1960s, as part of a marketing campaign.) Each year, hundreds of people flock to Union Square in Somerville, Massachusetts, for the annual What the Fluff? festival, a celebration of local arts, culture, and all things marshmallow creme-related.

Bang a Uey and Blinker

In a city as tough to park in as Boston, one develops hawk-like reflexes when it comes to scoping out on-street parking. Say you happen to notice a great spot right around the corner from your apartment, but the car’s going in the opposite direction. You should probably bang a Uey, which means “to make a sharp U-turn.”

While it’s an utterly Masshole move to pull, it also comes with the territory. If you feel like being nice first, flip on your blinker (pronounced “blink-AH”), Boston-speak for your car’s turn signal. Some motorists might still honk and flip you off as they drive by, but at least it’s better than nothing. 

Frappe

Would a milkshake by any other name still taste as sweet? It does in Boston, where those decadent drinks are better known as frappes (pronounced like “frap”). If you’re from out of town, you’d be forgiven for confusing it with a frappé (pronounced “fra-PAY”), which is considered either “a dessert made of partly frozen beverages, fruit juices, etc.” or “a drink made of some beverage poured over shaved ice” in other cities. 

The T

Catching a game down at Fenway? You don’t want to pay to park your car. Ask a local, and they’ll probably tell you to “hop on the T,” meaning the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority), the city’s public transportation system. Sure, you might end up sweating up a storm while you wait at Park Street for the next Green Line train to Kenmore, but it’ll be worth it once you get to Lansdowne Street and see all the traffic you successfully avoided.

The Green Monster

Speaking of Fenway, it’s hard to miss the Green Monster, the 37-foot wall that spans 231 feet across the park’s left field and makes home runs notoriously tricky for visiting teams. The structure—which was once called “The Wall”—was covered with ads until Tom Yawkey, then the owner of the Red Sox, opted to have it painted green instead in 1947. The rest is Boston Red Sox history. 

Allston Christmas

Every year around September 1, thousands of new college students and recent grads move in and out of Boston, making it one of the busiest—and most chaotic—times to be in the city. But if you act fast, you’ll get to enjoy the upside of it all, which is Allston Christmas.

During this unofficial holiday, everything from lamps and toasters to desks and bookcases are free and up for grabs as residents scramble to pack up and clear out of their apartments. Neighborhoods like Allston and Brighton tend to be at the epicenter of it all thanks to the surrounding colleges and high number of student renters. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, as the saying goes. And once you scope out some of the treasures hidden amid the trash-covered sidewalks of lower Allston, you’ll know just how much this annual event really exemplifies it. (Just watch out for the bed bugs.) 

Storrowed 

A local tradition as time-honored as the Boston Marathon, storrowing goes hand in hand with Allston Christmas. It refers to the spectacle that ensues every Labor Day weekend as out-of-towners attempt to drive moving trucks under the notoriously low overpasses on Storrow Drive. 

There’s a 10-foot height limit across the parkway, but that hasn’t stopped newcomers from trying to barrel through anyway, often causing costly damage and massive traffic jams in the process. To avoid getting storrowed (i.e., stuck in that pitiful situation yourself), just heed the posted warning signs—especially along Storrow Drive and Soldiers Field Road—and be careful come September, lest you accidentally give your truck the kind of haircut it can’t come back from.

Hoodsie

For folks who can’t decide whether they want chocolate or vanilla ice cream, a Hoodsie is the perfect compromise. Also referred to as a Hoodsie cup, this single-serve dessert famously comes in a small paper cup with a wooden spoon, and acts like an instant nostalgia trip for native New Englanders, plunging them back into old childhood memories. The pull-off lids, another classic part of the treat’s appeal, used to feature images of celebrities like Bing Crosby, Charlton Heston, Roy Rogers, and Judy Garland, as well as famous athletes. HP Hood, the company that manufactures them, is based in Lynnfield, Massachusetts.

Jimmies

Known as sprinkles virtually everywhere else, jimmies are those little bits of candy that you might be tempted to scatter over your Hoodsie cup before taking a bite. Some locals would argue that the term only applies to the chocolate variety, while others use it as a catch-all when referring to either shade of this beloved ice cream topping. 

The origins of the term are fairly contentious, though. The Just Born candy company, founded in 1923, is usually credited with popularizing the confection in 1930; jimmies were supposedly named after Jimmy Bartholomew, an employee who operated the machine that produced them. The topping made its way to Boston in the late 1940s by way of Brigham’s Ice Cream, which claimed to be the first ever to use the topping and give it away for free in the city, adding to its cache among locals. 

According to Snopes, chocolate sprinkles were actually kicking around in the early 1920s before Just Born was founded. They may have been invented even earlier by a housewife for her son’s birthday, casting some dubiousness over the oft-told story. Another theory suggests the term references Jim Crow, but neither Snopes nor Boston.com found evidence that it was ever intended to have racist undertones.

Elastic

The rubber band that you use to hold up your hair? Yeah, that’s called an “elastic” in Boston. In the 1950s, the Massachusetts-based Hook Brown Company patented the first-ever fabric-covered “elastic loop fastener.” A precursor to the modern-day scrunchie, these innovative hair ties meant folks finally found a way to painlessly pull their hair back and style it as they pleased. It also explains why most of the original name still holds firm to this day across the state. 

Dungarees

The flares vs. skinny jeans debate might be one of the great generational conflicts of our age, but it’s probably all the same difference to your grandparents if they live anywhere north of I-90. Regardless of the style, they go by the name dungarees, a blanket term often used by old-timers to describe any pair of denim blue jeans. 

The OED dates dungarees back to the 17th century, and it’s speculated that it hails from Dongari Killa (meaning “hill fort”), now Dongri, a port city in India not far from Mumbai. The Hindi word dungri refers to the coarse cloth made in the area, often dyed indigo. By the 1800s, it was being exported to the West by the British East India Company for manufacturing affordable, heavy-duty work clothes that were durable enough for manual labor. Over time, it came to denote the pants themselves rather than just the fabric, and even more specifically, indicated a “pair of trousers combined with an extra piece of cloth or bib covering the stomach and chest, and held up by straps over the shoulders,” so essentially, overalls.

As for why they’re still called “dungarees” in Massachusetts, it might have something to do with the school dress codes of yore. Before the 1970s, students in many parts of the state couldn’t wear denim jeans in class. In Dedham, teenagers even protested, staging classroom walkouts and chanting “We want dungarees!” during what has since been dubbed “Dungaree Day.” The ban was lifted by 1974, but for many Boomers, the throwback label still applies whether you’re rocking high-rises, low-rises, or a comfy pair of overalls. 

Three-Decker and Southie

A three-decker (or triple-decker) is a three-story apartment building with a unit stacked on each floor. Thousands were built across Boston throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries to accommodate multigenerational living among immigrant families, many of whom were Irish. Each dwelling usually has a front and back porch, along with multiple bedrooms. While Dorchester, Roxbury, and Southie (short for South Boston) are best known for them, three-deckers line the streets of many old Massachusetts mill towns, including Fall River, Lowell, and Worcester (the latter of which is commonly mispronounced—it’s “woos-TER,” not “WOR-ches-ter”).

Space-saver

After a nor’easter hits, you might notice something strange in the days that follow: Beach chairs, coolers, and all manner of large household objects cluttered along the edges of the snow-covered streets. As odd as it all might look in the wintertime, the curbside paraphernalia serves a purpose. In Boston, they’re what’s known as space-savers, and they’re meant to keep folks from parking in a spot you’ve painstakingly shoveled out. They’re usually good for up to 48 hours after the city declares a snow emergency, but move one—and park in the space—at your own peril.

Wicked and Pissah

Hang out in Boston long enough and you’re bound to hear someone or something described as “a real pissah.” Before you take offense, you should know that’s actually a good thing up in Beantown, where it’s often meant in a teasing way as a term of endearment for things you like and even see as awesome.

Calling someone a “wicked pissah” (or ”wicked smart,” like in the Good Will Hunting scene above) is even better. As an adjective, wicked usually denotes something “morally evil” and “likely to cause harm or distress,” but when the word is used as an intensifying adverb—mostly how it’s done in Boston—its meaning completely changes. According to Merriam-Webster, it can stress something “to an extreme or impressive degree” in that context.  

Though linguists speculate that its usage as an intensifier might have some connection to the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s or even Shakespeare’s Macbeth (thanks to the famous line “Something wicked this way comes”), for many average New Englanders, wicked is just another form of really or very. 

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