Ohio

In Gen Alpha slang, “Ohio” means weird, awkward, cringe or just bad. “That’s so Ohio” has nothing to do with the actual state.

What Ohio means in slang

Merriam-Webster defines slang Ohio as something weird, awkward, cringeworthy or otherwise bad, and sometimes boring or foolish. It often shows up stacked with other Gen Alpha words for comic effect: “Ohio rizz” (bad flirting), “only in Ohio,” or long strings like “skibidi Ohio rizz” that are mostly nonsense on purpose.

Examples

• “You wore socks with Crocs to the dance? That’s so Ohio.”
• “My mom tried to flirt with my dad using a pun. Ohio rizz.”
• “A guy at the mall was walking a cat on a leash. Only in Ohio.”

Where it came from

Merriam-Webster says it came out of a wave of memes about the state that started circulating in the late 2010s. The classic format is “only in Ohio”: take a clip of something surreal or deeply wrong and present it as a normal day in Ohio. From there, “Ohio” became shorthand for anything bizarre, and Gen Alpha kids folded it into the rest of their brain rot vocabulary.

Why Ohio? There’s no deep reason. It’s a big, ordinary Midwestern state, which made it the perfect deadpan setting for absurd jokes.

A note for Ohioans

It’s not personal. Kids saying “Ohio” are almost never making a point about the state; they’re using a meme word. Plenty of people from Ohio find it funny.

Related terms

• Skibidi: a nonsense word often paired with Ohio.
• Rizz: charm, as in “Ohio rizz.”
• Cringe: embarrassing.
• Six seven: another baffling kid catchphrase.

See more terms like this in our Gen Alpha slang guide.