Take a sip of this story, brought to you by SoulBoxer – quality, ready-to-drink cocktails that promise less time making, more time drinking. Put a little soul in your life, Milwaukee.

Last night I was a guest bartender at Walker’s Pint and a friend came in to visit. He said, jokingly, "You like words, right?" I said indeed, I am fond of  "the words," and then he stumped me on one.

It wasn’t a long and pretentious word that I might have skimmed while studying for the SAT – "diaphanous" comes to mind – rather a three-letter word: "ope."

"Ope?" I asked. "O-P-E?"

"Yeah, ‘ope,’" he said. "Know what it means?"

I admitted that I did not know the meaning of the word and so he showed me, on his phone, a page from the Urban Dictionary with the definition for "ope." Now, the Urban is no Oxford, but often it manages to nail a word so real that I herald it as a cultural bible.

Such was the case after reading the definition of the word "ope." 

"It's a Midwest thing. When someone cuts in front of you rudely, when you are surprised, when you bump into someone, or when something is offensively funny, you use the word ope."

Personally, I’ve used this many times in the "ope excuse me" sense, after almost running into someone in a crowded place like a dance club. I certainly wonder, though, if this is really a "Midwestern" thing. Whatcha think?