Whipping Shitties

Since my mom's family is Southern and my dad's is from southern Ohio, it's a minor miracle that I don't sound like a complete hillbilly every time I open my mouth to speak. But having grown up all over the US and overseas, meeting people from every corner of America, I've always been cued in to and fascinated by regional dialects. My cousins in Alabama always made fun of me for saying "pop" to their "co-cola", a term that I'll always use, no matter how far I am from Ohio.

A while ago I was trolling around looking up dialectology on the web and I came across a
linguistics survey that is incredibly thorough and really cool. It took over an hour to do, but the results were interesting and it's well worth the time. The survey was originally done in 2001 and those results are available, broken down by state if you'd like.

A couple of my favorites include:
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
One option: The devil is beating his wife.

What do you call the activity of driving around in circles in a car?
One option: Whipping shitties.

Apparently that term is more common to Minnesota. So, if you've ever wondered who uses the term Irish shower, French bath, whore's bath, etc, you should give it a whirl. Or a whirlygig. Or a helicopter.