When a car rolls slowly through a stop sign, it’s often called a California stop or a California roll. But the Midwest has its own monikers for this sneaky move, including the farmer stop, the Chicago stop, and no cop, no stop. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Names for Rolling Stops”
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
A few episodes ago, we were talking about what you call the practice of going up to a stop sign and then rolling through without stopping.
Here it’s called a…
California stop, a California roll.
Right, right. And we put the call out, asked our listeners for other examples of that around the country.
And you know what? We got a ton of responses from Wisconsin.
Jim said it’s called a farmer stop, which I love.
Dawn said it’s called a Chicago stop.
Karen said that her young drivers call it no cop, no stop.
Never heard that one.
And I love this one, too.
Kenton said, in Wisconsin, we call a rolling stop a violation.
Very good.
What line of work do you think Kenton’s in?
I think he’s a cop.
Well, I’m going to share some more of those later in the show.
But in the meantime, we’d love to hear your stories about language.
Call us with your questions, 877-929-9673, or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.
We always called this a “Hollywood stop” in Arkansas and Tennessee.