No Kops!
“In another case, Shuy helped solve a kidnapping and extortion case by using [the Dictionary of American Regional English]. A child was abducted from her home, and a scrawled ransom note was left behind demanding $10,000. The letter read, in part: ‘Put (the money) in the green trash kan on the devil strip at the corner of 18th and Carlson. Don’t bring anybody along. No kops!’
“…Shuy discerned a lot from the note, including that the ‘c’ words were deliberately spelled with a ‘k’ to suggest the suspect was uneducated. But the real kicker was ‘devil strip’: Turns out, according to DARE, that phrase describes ‘the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street,’ commonly known in Madison as a terrace. Hall says ‘devil strip’ is used almost solely in a well-defined triangle in Ohio between Youngstown, Cleveland and Akron. This piece of evidence helped along the case against one suspect, a relatively well-educated Akron native, who later confessed to the crime.”
From an interesting piece on the almost-complete Dictionary of American Regional English.
