Chicago’s top contributions to the English language

Those words and 36 other words and phrases are featured in a Chicago magazine article listing the city’s contributions to the English language. Some examples of other common words on the list include “clout,” “racketeer,” “egghead,” “doo-wop,” “cafeteria,” and “props.”

Some of the stories behind the various terms are pretty surprising. For instance, the word “midway,” the part of a carnival full of games and sideshows, came from the 1893 Columbian Exposition, where the Midway Plaisance in the southern part of the Hyde Park neighborhood served a similar purpose. Now, Chicago has an airport named Midway (though it’s named for the World War II Battle of Midway).

“Pipe dream,” another phrase Chicago can claim, was first used in the Chicago Tribune in 1890 to refer to air travel and apparently invokes the hallucinations of opium smokers.