New England Sayings Outsiders Never Understand | New England True New England True, New England

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]New England has sayings that make zero sense to outsiders, and if you do not know what wicked pissa means, you are definitely not from here.

[00:00:08]New England slang hits different. Wicked does not mean bad, it means very. Wicked good. Wicked awesome. Wicked pissa.

[00:00:18]Pissa means awesome, not a bathroom.

[00:00:21]Wicked pissa means extra awesome. Packy means liquor store, short for package store. Old post-prohibition laws meant liquor was sold packaged. Making a packy run before a Patriots game is a weekly ritual. Rotary means roundabout.

[00:00:36]Massachusetts is full of them. Absolute vehicular chaos. Hesitate for 1 second and you are getting honked at. Regular coffee does not mean black, it means cream and two sugars. Order a regular anywhere else and watch the confusion hit. Bang a way means make a U-turn, usually illegal and usually done without hesitation. New Englanders bang UAs anywhere. Jimmies are chocolate sprinkles. Not sprinkles, jimmies. Ice cream comes with jimmies, always. A shopping cart is a carriage, not a buggy or a trolley. A sandwich is a grinder, not a sub or hoagie. A drinking fountain is a bubbler. The basement is down cellar. Beer lives down cellar. A frappe is a milkshake with ice cream. In Rhode Island, they call it a cabinet. Order a milkshake and you might get just milk and syrup. So don't I means so do I.

[00:01:31]Completely backwards, completely correct here. Masshole is not an insult. It is a badge of honor. Precision driving at 70 miles an hour in a blizzard counts.

[00:01:42]These words make no sense unless you grew up here. New England is not just a place, it is a language. If you know, you know.