Essential English phrases

Memphis by its area code, and the city's main self-identifier — on shirts, beer, murals and the local holiday, 9/01, celebrated every September.

From the Grizzlies' 'Grit and Grind' era, and now a general local shorthand for stubborn unglamorous effort. It is how the city describes itself when it is being sincere.

The Mississippi Delta, which begins south of the city and supplies much of its music, food and population history. Memphis is the Delta's northern capital more than it is a Tennessee city.

The Peabody Hotel's mallards, which have ridden the lift down to the lobby fountain at 11am and back up at 5pm since the 1930s. A genuinely strange civic institution that the whole city is fond of.

The standard second-person plural. Not informal here, not regional colour — it is simply the word, used in shops, offices and church, and 'all y'all' is the emphatic form.

Memphis's older nickname, from the Chickasaw Bluffs it sits on — high ground above the Mississippi that kept the city dry when everything around it flooded.

Memphis Light, Gas and Water. Electricity, gas and water on one municipal bill — the largest three-service public utility in the country. Everyone says the initials; nobody says the full name.

The belt of early-twentieth-century neighbourhoods between downtown and the eastern suburbs — Cooper-Young, Overton Square, Central Gardens. 'Midtown is Memphis' is a bumper sticker and a worldview.

The Memphis Sand — the artesian sand aquifer the city draws its drinking water from, roughly 100 metres down and famously good. Memphians will tell you about their tap water unprompted, and they are right to.

Beyond Interstate 240, which rings the city. Used as shorthand for the eastern suburbs — Germantown, Collierville, Bartlett — which since 2014 have run their own school districts separately from Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

Memphis ribs are traditionally seasoned with a spice rub rather than sauced. Asking for wet or dry is a real question with a real answer, and the Rendezvous will bring you dry unless told otherwise.

The south-eastern tornado corridor. Unlike the plains version, storms here often come at night and are hidden by rain and trees, which is why the warning on your phone matters more than looking out of the window.