The Devil Strip Is Not a Gentlemen’s Club

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is David from just outside of Nashville, Tennessee.

Hi, David from just outside Nashville. What’s up?

I was recently visiting my two brothers. We grew up in Akron, Ohio, and we hadn’t been together in a while. So we decided we’d meet back there, and none of us live there anymore.

But we were driving around looking at some old places, including the house I grew up in, and looking at the changes. And at one point I said, I don’t remember that sidewalk being there. My older brother, who’s old enough to remember things better than I am, he said, oh, yeah, that sidewalk was there when we were kids right there next to the Devil Strip.

And I said, Devil Strip. That’s a term I hadn’t heard since I couldn’t remember when, but it did ring a faint bell. And it turned out that the Devil Strip, you know, have some sidewalks in the city that are right up against the curb. But in this neighborhood in Akron, the sidewalk was set back from the curb by about four feet. And in that four feet was another strip of grass.

And my brother told me not only that that thing is called the double strip, but as far as he knew, that Akron was the place that called it a double strip and that they didn’t call it that anywhere else. And so I said, this sounds like a job for A Way with Words.

Yep, absolutely. 100%. Right, Martha?

Yes, indeed. And I’m not at all surprised that you haven’t heard it in Tennessee, because Devil’s Strip is pretty much located in Akron, Ohio, and that part of Ohio. And it goes by lots of different names around the country.

For example, if you lived in one of the western states, David, you would probably call it the Parkway or the Parking. Or in Washington State, it’s called the Parking Strip. Yeah, a boulevard in Minneapolis or Treebelt in Springfield, Massachusetts, Tree lawn in Cleveland, berm in North Dakota.

Yep. And in the south, in the deep south, Louisiana and Mississippi, you might hear it described as neutral ground. And that idea of neutral ground or sort of no man’s land, that is that strip doesn’t belong to the city and it doesn’t belong to the homeowner, that may be behind the idea of calling it the devil strip.

And David, Grant knows where I’m going with this because the term devil strip figures in one of the greatest stories of forensic linguistics ever.

Wow, what a buildup.

It is. You want to hear this, David?

Oh, do I after that? Of course I do.

Well, many years ago, the police in Illinois were struggling to narrow down a list of subjects in a kidnapping case. And they brought in a linguist named Roger Shye and asked him to analyze the ransom note. And the kidnapper had demanded that $10,000 in cash be left in a trash can, quote, on the Devil Strip at the corner of 18th and Carlson.

So Roger Shye, the linguist, asked the police, do you have any suspects from Akron, Ohio, by any chance? And they were stunned. But it turned out that indeed one of their suspects was from Akron. And the cops confronted this suspect from Akron. And indeed, he confessed.

And the reason that they solved this case at that point was that it’s sort of a telltale piece of vocabulary. Shibboleth, thank you. That was the word I was looking for. Yeah, it’s pretty much associated with Akron or in that area of Ohio.

How about that?

That’s amazing. The reason it’s called Devil Strip, I mean, we were trying to figure it out, and my wife came up with an idea that, you know, it’s close enough to the street that you’re in danger land there. You’re kind of toying with the devil if you’re that close to the story.

Maybe, but there is a pattern of use of the word devil as an adjective just to refer to land that is unproductive or unused. So it’s possible what your wife thinks, but I think more likely it’s just about it being an unused, unusable strip.

Well, thank you, and thanks for the great story. I appreciate it.

Take care now. Bye-bye.

You too. Bye-bye.

So you’re talking with your siblings, and you realize that you all say something that nobody else says. Well, this is the place to talk about that, 877-929-9673.