Top 40 Chicago Words

Chicago Magazine developed a list of 40 words that originated or were popularized right here in Chicago.

You can read the list here.

So from this list, which words do you hear us say?

The moment of creation for a word often remains elusive. Typically (at least before the Internet age), a word gains popu­larity in local speech and then gets written down somewhere. When lexicographers start tracing lineage, the closest they can come to pinpointing a word’s birth is frequently its first appearance in print.

Still, Chicago—City on the Make—has demonstrably had a hand in the genesis of many well-known words and phrases. Here are Chicago’s top 40 contributions to the English language, ranked by importance, the degree of Chicago influence, and overall Chicagoness, to coin a term.?

– Via

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Culture & Style. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.