What do you call the strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk? Depending on where you live, you may call it a tree lawn, a berm, a city strip, the parking, or one of a host of other regional terms for it. In a small part of the country, this narrow piece of land called a devil strip. In fact, this expression figures in a great story about forensic linguistics: When a linguist analyzed a ransom note and saw the term devil strip, he realized this was a telltale clue– one that would lead authorities right to the kidnapper. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Devil Strip”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Yes, hello, this is Mike from Milwaukee.
Hiya, Mike. What’s going on?
There’s a term that I grew up with, and I’ve heard nobody use it anywhere else, and I thought maybe you guys could help me.
Okay, what is it?
The term is devil strip.
Devil strip?
Either devil strip or devil strip, and I’m not sure which.
Huh, and what does that mean?
Well, I grew up in northern Ohio, and the Devil Strip was a piece of grass between the sidewalk and the curb.
Mm-Mm-Maybe Akron or someplace like that?
Yes, just north of Akron.
Huh. Bingo, Grant.
Yep, exactly.
And how did you know that?
This is one of those questions that’s come up a few times before, but there is a beautiful entry for this term in the Dictionary of American Regional English.
Okay.
And both spellings, just as you spelled them, are in there, D-E-V-I-L apostrophe S, S-T-R-I-P, without the possessive, so devil’s strip or devil’s strip.
Okay.
And you know what’s really weird about this, Mike, is that this thing, this part of the land that you’re talking about, goes by so many different names around the country, it’s really astonishing.
Oh, exactly.
In different places, people call it the berm, the boulevard, the green belt, the city strip, the parking, the parking strip, the sidewalk plot.
Just the parking?
Yeah, the parking or the tree bank, the tree lawn, the tree belt.
It’s crazy.
And you want to know one other really cool thing about Devil Strip, Mike?
What’s that?
Devil Strip figures in this wonderful story of forensic linguistics.
Do you know what that is?
No.
Forensic linguistics is the study of the language of criminals.
And there is a terrific story about a linguist named Roger Shai.
Grant, he’s a colleague of yours, right?
That’s right.
Yeah.
A few years ago, there was a kidnapping.
And the authorities took the ransom note from the kidnapper to this linguist and said, can you tell us anything about this guy?
The linguist looks at the ransom note and he says, well, do you happen to have any suspects who are well-educated men who are from Akron, Ohio?
And they said, oh, my gosh, yes, we do.
As a matter of fact, the guy was caught and convicted.
And do you know how he did it?
This is so interesting.
They figured out the well-educated because he was misspelling on purpose certain words like cops.
He would spell them K-O-P-S.
Okay.
But then he wouldn’t have any problem with longer words.
And so it was clear that this was somebody who was trying to disguise his education.
And then the other telltale giveaway was that he used the expression devil strip.
And that is so particular to one little part of Ohio.
Just Akron.
Do you know where that came from?
We don’t know.
And it’s one of those things that has been well researched.
The PBS documentary, Do You Speak American?, talks about this, and we’ll link to Roger Shai’s full explanation of the court case.
I always thought, I assumed, and it’s just my own assumption, that it might have been called that because you didn’t own it, but you had to maintain it.
Kind of a devil’s deal, huh?
Right.
I have read that in Mansfield, Ohio, it’s sometimes called a tax strip or a government strip, so maybe there’s sort of a similar idea there.
Only in the Akron area. That’s interesting.
Pretty much northern Ohio, but I just think that’s such a great story.
Great. Well, that’s helped me.
All right.
Thank you, Mike.
Thank you very much.
Okay, don’t kidnap anybody.
Okay, bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
So he’s a colleague of yours, Grant.
Right. I’ve met him a couple times. We’ve traded emails.
I think he is in retirement or headed for retirement.
He’s got a couple books about forensic linguistics.
They’re interesting to me.
I don’t know if they’re everyone’s cup of tea, but his last name, we should spell his last name as S-H-U-Y, Roger Shai.
Yeah.
So he Googles very well.
If you Google him, you’ll find his bibliography and maybe find something there to interest you.
What I want to know is why doesn’t this guy have his own TV series?
I mean, that’s terrific.
Well, you know, it’s funny.
That is an interesting case, but it’s the kind of thing that you can’t always do.
Roger would probably tell you gleefully and gladly about his list of failures because they’re sometimes more instructive than his successes.
Well, maybe we should ask him.
If you’ve got a question about language, if you want to know why people say the things they do, we’d like to help you.
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