Essential English phrases

How locals write and increasingly say the city's name — on the airport code, the city's own web address and half the local brands. Saying 'Des Moines' in full marks you as new; saying the final 's' in 'Moines' marks you as very new indeed.

The Iowa State Fair, eleven days in August on the East Side. It is not a county fair with ambitions — it draws over a million people, the city plans around it, and 'are you going to the Fair' is a question with only one acceptable answer.

The Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa — a week-long, tens-of-thousands-strong ride from the Missouri River to the Mississippi every July, run by the Des Moines Register since 1973. Riders dip a wheel in each river; the route changes annually and the towns compete to be on it.

Not a primary. Iowa's parties meet in person in schools and church halls on a winter evening to pick presidential preferences. Des Moines fills with campaign staff and press for months beforehand, and locals treat being canvassed at home as an ordinary seasonal event.

About four miles of enclosed second-storey bridges knitting downtown together, one of the largest such systems in the country. From December to February a large part of downtown's working population does not go outdoors between the car park and the desk.

I-235 cuts straight through the middle of Des Moines while I-35 and I-80 form a bypass around the north and west. Every address here is described by which of the three you get off, and 'inside 235' is local shorthand for the older, denser city.

The restored warehouse and shopfront district immediately east of the Capitol, and the answer to 'where should we meet'. Not to be confused with the East Side, which is the much larger working-class half of the city beyond it.

The 1920s–30s brick Tudor bungalows that fill the Beaverdale neighbourhood, distinctive enough that the phrase is used as a house type in listings. Buying 'a Beaverdale brick' communicates the whole thing in two words.

The summer notice that river nitrate has climbed past the federal 10 mg/L drinking-water limit and lawn watering is restricted or banned. It is agricultural runoff from upstream, it now happens most years, and it is the local water story.

A real distinction here, not pedantry. A blizzard warning is about wind and visibility rather than snowfall total, and central Iowa gets ground blizzards on clear days when wind lifts old snow off open fields. The roads close either way.

The involuntary Midwestern syllable emitted when squeezing past someone, dropping something, or realising you are in the way. Usually followed by 'let me just sneak right past ya'. You will start doing it within six months and you will not notice.

A trip to Casey's General Store, the Iowa-founded petrol-station chain whose breakfast pizza has a genuine and unironic local following. Late-night food outside downtown frequently means this.