Then there's the food, like the classic Midwest hotdish. Although it's the unofficial state cuisine of Minnesota, you can find different iterations of hotdish in other Midwestern states as well. There are three main components in a hotdish: starch, protein, and vegetable. Food blogger Molly Yeh, who now lives in North Dakota, describes the hotdish like this: "If you were to place [the hotdish] on an x/y chart where x = how much it looks like barf, and y = how delicious it is, they would be maxed out on both accounts. That's the charm of a hotdish."
Midwesterners also have some interesting phrases you probably wouldn't hear in other regions of the U.S. One of them is "Ope" which the "Midwest Vs. Everybody" page has in its title as well. People describe "Ope" in many different ways (and it rhymes with "rope," by the way), but essentially it's somewhat a mix of "oh" and "oops."
Midwesterners say "Ope!" when they're surprised, when they want to squeeze past someone in line at the supermarket, or even when they accidentally spill wine on their or somebody else's shirt. Linguist Ben Zimmer explained to HuffPost that the word is a somewhat mix between "oops" and "welp." "It could also be thought of as the 'oh' interjection plus a final '-p,'" he explained.
Have we got any Pandas from the Midwest here? Let us know in the comments if any of these identifiers fit the description of a Midwesterner. And if you're looking for more funny bits from the "Midwest Vs. Everybody" page, check out this article we did about their page back in 2021!