Terry, a native of Akron, Ohio, is curious why it seems no one outside of his hometown uses the term devil strip to mean “the narrow band of grass between sidewalk and street.” Devil strip was formerly used this way in a few other cities, but is now heard almost exclusively in Akron, Ohio. This dialectal difference figures in one of a fantastic story involving forensic linguistics. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Devil Strip”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, my name is Terry Wilson, and I am calling from Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Hi, Terry. Welcome to the show. What’s on your mind?
Well, I was listening to your show a month or so ago, and I got thinking about a term that was used back in my hometown of Akron, Ohio, and I have never heard it used anywhere else before. Since then, I’ve traveled a lot and lived in different places, and the term is Devil Strip.
Tell us what you know about Devil Strip.
In my hometown of Akron, Ohio, the Devil Strip was a little strip of land between the sidewalk and the street and the curb, in other words. And it was actually city property, but everybody was responsible for keeping it mowed. It was actually, I think, where probably some of the utility meters were located, like the water meter and so on. But it was just considered part of our place. And I can remember my dad saying, hey, I’m going to go out and mow the lawn. Don’t forget to mow the devil’s strip. And I would say, okay, no problem.
So it’s a space between the sidewalk and the road, the little strip of grass there.
Yeah, that’s it.
Boy, have we got a story for you. You know, there’s a reason that this is famous among people who study American dialects and American regionalisms. It’s because this term is currently only used in Akron, Ohio. It’s not used anywhere else. Now, it used to be. You used to be able to find it in Rochester and Buffalo, New York, or Toronto and Montreal and Ottawa. But for some reason, it only seems to last in Ohio.
But the reason this is famous among people studying American dialects is there’s a forensic linguist by the name of Roger Shai. And there was this well-known kidnapping case where the police came to him with a note that a kidnapper had given them, a ransom note. And the note said, no cops, come alone. And the cops was spelled with a K. And then it said, put it in the green trash can, and can was spelled with a K, on the Devil’s Strip at the corner of 18th and Carlson. And so Roger Shai, he says, is one of your suspects an educated man born in Akron, Ohio? And the cops were amazed. And Roger said, first, nobody would actually spell cop and can with a K, even if they were poorly educated. So it’s clearly somebody who’s well-educated trying to look uneducated. And second, Devil Strip is only used in Akron, Ohio currently. Other places call it things like a sidewalk buffer or the tree lawn or have no name for it at all. And so they solved the case because only one person that they were considering as a suspect was from Akron, Ohio.
Wow, that is cool.
Yeah.
Great.
Well, you know, the only other time I’ve ever had anybody say anything about it, and it was really a different strip, was that they said back in the late 1800s when there were streetcars, that they often called a little strip of land between the streetcars that were going one direction or the other. That because basically it was a very dangerous place to, you know, very dangerous place to be.
That is exactly right. You’re talking about when you have two sets of streetcar tracks going in opposite directions and there’s like this strip of surface between them and people might want to walk or bicycle there. But if you get caught there, you might get caught between two streetcars going in opposite directions. And if you’re a little wider than the space allowed by those streetcars overhanging their tracks, you’re going to get crushed. And actually, if you look in old newspapers, you will find stories of people being killed or severely injured by walking on the devil strip between streetcars.
Wow. Interesting. Well, Terry, I am so excited to hear from somebody who is from Akron who uses that term devil strip, because that is one of my favorite stories in all the forensic linguistics. You know, they use linguist talents to solve crimes sometimes, and that’s such a great example of it. So I love that you brought that field report to us.
I’m glad I could. I enjoyed it.
Thank you, Terry.
Take care and give us another call sometime.
Okay.
All right.
Thanks so much.
I appreciate it.
Bye-bye.
Bye, Terry.
