Notifications
Clear all
August 3, 2025 9:09 am
Mary-Clare recalls that when she was growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, everyone she knew used the term hoosier as a kind of teasing pejorative. If someone did something silly, others would say You’re such a hoosier, the adjective hoozh, or jokingly dismiss someone as a member of the hoosioisie. The term had circulated throughout the US Midwest long before Indiana residents adopted the word Hoosier to denote denizens of that state. But the other sense lived on in the St. Louis area, once a great crossroads and gateway to the West and thus something of a linguistic island all its own. This is part of a complete episode.