| tuxedoAmerican evening dress is named for a Hudson Valley club. | Tuxedo Park | From the place | Well attested |
| bourbonThe whiskey is named for a Kentucky county, itself named for a French dynasty. | Bourbon County | From its product | Probable |
| bunkumNonsense is named after a North Carolina county. | Buncombe County | From the place | Well attested |
| hoochBootleg liquor is named for a Tlingit community in Alaska. | Angoon | From the place | Well attested |
| norovirusThe winter vomiting bug is named for a town in Ohio. | Norwalk | From the place | Well attested |
| tularemiaThe disease is named for a county in California. | Tulare County | From the place | Well attested |
| WatergateThe suffix for every scandal since is a Washington office block. | Watergate complex | From the place | Well attested |
| americanoThe coffee is named for the Americans who wanted it weaker. | United States | From its people | Well attested |
| bluepointThe oyster is named for a hamlet on Long Island. | Blue Point | From the place | Well attested |
| CharlestonThe dance is named for a South Carolina port. | Charleston | From the place | Well attested |
| chautauquaA whole movement in adult education is named for a lake in New York. | Chautauqua Lake | From the place | Well attested |
| hackneyThe hired cab, and the verb hack, point to a London parish. | Hackney | From the place | Probable |
| barnetLondon slang for hair is half of Barnet Fair. | Barnet | From the place | Well attested |
| CupertinoThe autocorrect blunder is named for a Californian city. | Cupertino | From the place | Well attested |
| ManhattanThe cocktail is named for a New York island. | Manhattan | From the place | Well attested |
| MiltownThe first blockbuster tranquilliser is named for a New Jersey borough. | Milltown | From the place | Well attested |
| QuonsetThe wartime hut is named for a point in Rhode Island. | Quonset Point | From the place | Well attested |
| WinnebagoThe motorhome is named for an Iowa county. | Winnebago County | From the place | Well attested |
| Boston cream pieA cake called a pie is named for a city. | Boston | From its product | Well attested |
| Bronx cheerA rude noise is named for a New York borough. | The Bronx | From the place | Well attested |
| buffalo wingThe wings are named for a city, not an animal. | Buffalo | From its product | Well attested |
| California CurrentThe Pacific's cold counterpart is named for the coast it follows. | California | From the place | Well attested |
| Chelsea bunThe bun is named for a London district's bakery. | Chelsea | From its product | Well attested |
| Coney Island hot dogA Michigan diner staple is named for a New York beach. | Coney Island | From the place | Well attested |
| Dover soleThe fish is named for the port that landed it freshest. | Dover | From its product | Well attested |
| Gulf StreamThe current that warms Europe is named for where it starts. | Gulf of Mexico | From the place | Well attested |
| Hawaiian shirtThe loud shirt is named for the islands that made it. | Hawaii | From the place | Well attested |
| Lyme diseaseThe disease is named for a town in Connecticut. | Lyme | From the place | Well attested |
| New York minuteImpatience has a city attached to it. | New York City | From the place | Well attested |
| Philly cheesesteakThe sandwich is named for the city that argues about it. | Philadelphia | From its product | Well attested |
| Worcestershire sauceThe sauce is named for an English county. | Worcester | From its product | Well attested |
| American cheeseIt names a country; in US law it now means processed cheese. | United States | From its people | Well attested |
| Arizona roomA room named for a state, built to dodge the heat that state is famous for. | Arizona | From the place | Probable |
| baked AlaskaA hot dessert named for a frozen territory the United States had just bought. | Alaska | From the place | Probable |
| Bakersfield soundCountry music's sharpest rebuttal to Nashville came from a California oil town. | Bakersfield | From the place | Well attested |
| Bisbee blueThe most prized American turquoise was a nuisance byproduct of copper mining. | Bisbee | From its product | Well attested |
| Boston BrahminA New England aristocracy named after an Indian priestly caste by a Boston doctor. | Boston | From the place | Well attested |
| Bretton WoodsThe world's monetary order is named for a resort hotel in the New Hampshire woods. | Bretton Woods | From the place | Well attested |
| Brooklyn blackout cakeNamed for wartime blackouts ordered to hide the Brooklyn Navy Yard. | Brooklyn | From the place | Probable |
| California kingA California king is narrower than an ordinary king, not bigger. | California | From the place | Probable |
| California rollA roll named for California may well have been invented in Canada. | California | From the place | Probable |
| Cape CodderNamed for the cranberry bogs, not the beaches. | Cape Cod | From its people | Probable |
| Chicago BoyA 1950s student exchange put Chicago economics into a Chilean junta's cabinet. | Chicago | Indirect | Well attested |
| Chinese pieThe China in this pie may be South China, Maine. | South China | Disputed | Disputed |
| Cincinnati chiliChili made by Macedonian immigrants, spiced like a Balkan stew, served on pasta. | Cincinnati | From the place | Well attested |
| Colby cheeseA young Wisconsin cheesemaker invented it in 1885 and named it after his township. | Colby | From the place | Well attested |
| Concord grapeAmerica's juice-and-jelly grape was bred in one backyard in Massachusetts. | Concord | From the place | Well attested |
| Denver bootDenver clamped cars instead of towing them, and the city kept the credit. | Denver | From the place | Well attested |
| drap de BerryA retired English word for cloth, borrowed whole from a French province. | Berry | From its product | Probable |
| Florida pantherIt is not a panther, and no black one has ever been confirmed. | Florida | From the place | Well attested |
| Florida roomThe room that sells a Florida lifestyle is mostly a defense against mosquitoes. | Florida | From the place | Probable |
| hackney writerThe hack in hack writer started out as a horse from a London parish. | Hackney | Disputed | Disputed |
| Harlem RenaissanceThe most American of movements is named for a town in the Netherlands. | Harlem | From the place | Well attested |
| Hollywood bedA bed named for glamour that mostly means "we left the footboard off." | Hollywood | From the place | Probable |
| Hollywood uglyGlasses and a ponytail are all it takes to be ugly in Hollywood. | Hollywood | From the place | Probable |
| Idaho stopOne state legalized rolling stops for bikes in 1982; the rest ignored it for decades. | Idaho | From the place | Well attested |
| Kentucky rifleAlmost every one of them was made in Pennsylvania. | Kentucky | From the place | Well attested |
| Key limeThe Florida Keys lime is a Southeast Asian fruit that Spanish ships carried west. | Florida Keys | From the place | Well attested |
| Long Island iced teaIt contains no tea, and two different Long Islands claim it. | Long Island | From the place | Disputed |
| Maine CoonThe coon half rests on a raccoon story that is biologically impossible. | Maine | From the place | Well attested |
| Manhattan distanceA distance metric named for a street plan you cannot cut diagonally across. | Manhattan | From the place | Well attested |
| Miami bassA Florida genre defined by a Japanese drum machine nobody wanted at first. | Miami | From the place | Well attested |
| Milwaukee protocolNamed for the hospital that saved an unvaccinated rabies patient in 2004. | Milwaukee | From the place | Well attested |
| Monterey JackHalf the name is a California town; the other half is probably a man named Jacks. | Monterey | From the place | Probable |
| Nashville hot chickenTennessee's signature dish began, by family account, as an act of revenge. | Nashville | From the place | Well attested |
| Nashville soundNashville answered rock and roll by sanding the twang off country music. | Nashville | From the place | Well attested |
| New Jersey teaThe tea colonists drank when they refused to drink tea. | New Jersey | From the place | Well attested |
| New York secondThe shortest measurable interval, defined by the driver behind you. | New York City | From the place | Probable |
| New York stripThe same steak becomes a Kansas City strip once you leave New York. | New York City | From the place | Probable |
| New York-style pizzaThe famous it-is-the-water explanation has never actually been demonstrated. | New York City | From the place | Well attested |
| not in Kansas anymoreOne line of movie dialogue turned a real state into a byword for normality. | Kansas | From the place | Well attested |
| Ohio Valley diseaseA lung infection named for the valley where almost every resident meets it. | Ohio River | From the place | Probable |
| Pearl HarborThe harbor is named for the pearl oysters that once grew in it. | Pearl Harbor | From the place | Well attested |
| Pennsylvania barnIts overhanging upper floor came from Alpine Europe, not from Pennsylvania. | Pennsylvania | From the place | Well attested |
| Philadelphia lawyerThe compliment may date from a Philadelphian who won a New York libel case. | Philadelphia | From the place | Probable |
| Quonset hutThe all-American hut is a copy of a British one, named in Narragansett. | Quonset Point | From the place | Well attested |
| Rhode Island RedA village in the smallest state built a stone monument to a chicken. | Rhode Island | From the place | Well attested |
| San Francisco soundA ballroom scene in one city became the national label for psychedelia. | San Francisco | From the place | Well attested |
| St. Paul sandwichNamed for Saint Paul, sold only in St. Louis, and nobody can explain why. | Saint Paul | Disputed | Disputed |
| Tex-MexTex-Mex began life as a telegraphic abbreviation for a railroad company. | Texas | From the place | Well attested |
| Texas dipA curtsy so extreme it takes a state's name and weeks of rehearsal. | Texas | From the place | Probable |
| Texas hold 'emThe Texas legislature voted on where the game was born. | Texas | From the place | Probable |
| Texas-sizedTexas lost its size crown in 1959 and kept the adjective anyway. | Texas | From the place | Well attested |
| Texas teaOil as a beverage: the joke reached America through a TV theme song. | Texas | From the place | Probable |
| Texas toastIt exists because a bakery cut the slices too thick for the toaster. | Texas | From the place | Probable |
| Virginia creeperNamed by Europeans for a colony far larger than today's Virginia. | Virginia | From the place | Well attested |
| Alaskan KingAmerican bed sizes use state names as units of bigness. | Alaska | From the place | Probable |
| Arizona perfumeArizona became a slang prefix meaning the cheapest possible version of anything. | Arizona | From the place | Probable |
| beidelliteThe material from the place the mineral is named after turned out not to be the mineral. | Colorado | From the place | Well attested |
| berkeliumThe discoverers picked the name as a deliberate echo of an older element named for a Swedish village. | Berkeley | From the place | Well attested |
| BosoxThe word exists because two American cities fielded a team called the Sox and headline writers had to tell them apart. | Boston | Indirect | Well attested |
| Boston marriageThe phrase describes a common Victorian arrangement that left almost no written record of its own name. | Boston | From the place | Probable |
| Brooklyn fadeOne haircut, several city names, depending on which barber you ask. | Brooklyn | From the place | Probable |
| BrooklyneseThe accent got a borough's name because that is where the movies said their tough guys came from. | Brooklyn | From the place | Well attested |
| californiumA magazine editorial mocked the name within months, and the discoverers had a ready answer. | California | From the place | Well attested |
| caroliniumAn element that existed for four years, named after a university that took its name from a state. | North Carolina | Indirect | Well attested |
| carrolliteA Maryland county gave its name to the mineral that now comes almost entirely from the Congolese copperbelt. | Carroll County | From the place | Well attested |
| cebolliteIt is named for the creek whose drainage the first samples came from, not for a mine or a town. | Cebolla Creek | From the place | Well attested |
| ChampNamed by exactly the trick that produced Nessie: clip the water's name, add a pet ending. | Lake Champlain | From the place | Well attested |
| Chicago overcoatRaymond Chandler put it in print in 1939, and it has been gangster shorthand ever since. | Chicago | From the place | Well attested |
| Chicago typewriterThe army would not buy it, so the name came from the people who did. | Chicago | From the place | Well attested |
| ChisoxA nickname built on a nickname: the White Sox were already a headline writer's abbreviation. | Chicago | Indirect | Well attested |
| Cupertino effectOfficial EU and NATO documents were published referring to Cupertino between nations. | Cupertino | From the place | Well attested |
| DiabloerThe Lord of Terror is named after a California peak with a paved road to the summit. | Mount Diablo | Indirect | Well attested |
| Duluth modelA program from one Minnesota city became the default sentence in American courts. | Duluth | From the place | Well attested |
| elpasoliteA mineral almost nobody collects gave its name to a whole family of synthetic crystals used to catch neutrons. | El Paso County | From the place | Well attested |
| franklinphiliteThe second half of the name is Greek for loving: mineralogists cannot leave this one New Jersey orebody alone. | Franklin | From the place | Well attested |
| Georgia overdriveAn imaginary extra gear, named the way American slang usually names bad ideas. | Georgia | From the place | Probable |
| get out of DodgeThe phrase is younger than the television show, not the cattle town. | Dodge City | From the place | Well attested |
| getchelliteA blood red sulfide from the Nevada gold mine that gave its name to a whole style of ore deposit. | Getchell mine | From the place | Well attested |
| gilaliteGreen needles of it grow inside quartz crystals and are sold as medusa quartz. | Gila County | From the place | Well attested |
| Harlem sunsetRaymond Chandler seems to have made this one up himself. | Q189074 | From the place | Probable |
| Hawthorne effectNone of the researchers who ran the original studies ever used the phrase. | Hawthorne Works | From the place | Well attested |
| Jersey DevilIt was the Leeds Devil before newspapers renamed it for the whole state. | New Jersey | From the place | Well attested |
| Jersey girlThe stereotype and the affectionate answer to it have been running against each other for forty years. | New Jersey | From the place | Probable |
| Kansas City shuffleThe phrase was a jazz record title before anyone wrote it down as a con. | Kansas City | From the place | Disputed |
| Las Vegas effectInterface designers borrowed the Strip as a warning label. | Las Vegas | From the place | Probable |
| laureliteOne Arizona mine produced four brand new minerals in a single 1989 paper. | Laurel Canyon | From the place | Well attested |
| livermoriumThe element honors a laboratory, the laboratory honors a town, and the town honors a Californian cattle rancher. | Livermore | Indirect | Well attested |
| madisonThe race is named for a New York arena that was demolished more than a century ago. | Madison Square and Madison Square Park | From the place | Well attested |
| Michigan rollThe con is over a century old and nobody wrote down what Michigan had to do with it. | Michigan | From the place | Probable |
| minehilliteMine Hill is the outcrop that gave away the Franklin zinc orebody in the first place. | Mine Hill | From the place | Well attested |
| Minnesota iceThe phrase exists only because an older phrase rhymed. | Minnesota | From the place | Probable |
| Minnesota niceThe phrase names a politeness that outsiders often read as a closed door. | Minnesota | From the place | Well attested |
| MississippianNamed for the river, not the state: the reference is to limestone bluffs a long way upstream of Mississippi. | Mississippi River | From the place | Well attested |
| Missouri canaryMissouri bred the mules that hauled the American West, and the bray is the punchline. | Missouri | From the place | Probable |
| Missouri toothpickFrontier humor gave the largest knife in America the daintiest name it could find. | Missouri | From the place | Probable |
| Nebraska IceIt is the rare ice that shrinks rather than expands when it freezes. | Nebraska | From the place | Well attested |
| nebraskanicAn adjective that exists for exactly one molecule, carrying the name of the state where it was identified. | Nebraska | From the place | Well attested |
| nebraskanic acidIt has a twin called wuhanic acid, because two laboratories shared the discovery. | Nebraska | From the place | Well attested |
| Nevada TriangleThe mountain weather does the work that the mystery gets credit for. | Nevada | From the place | Probable |
| New England clam chowderA Maine legislator once introduced a bill to make tomatoes in chowder illegal. | New England | From the place | Well attested |
| PennsylvanianNorth America cut the Carboniferous in half and named the halves after a state and a river. | Pennsylvania | From the place | Well attested |
| PittsburgheseThe name was invented by newspapers rather than linguists, and it turned an accent into a souvenir. | Pittsburgh | From the place | Well attested |
| play in PeoriaVaudeville treated one Illinois city as the test market for the entire country. | Peoria | From the place | Well attested |
| Seattle rollIt is named for a city rather than a tradition: nobody eats it in Japan. | Seattle | From the place | Well attested |
| Spenard divorceThe phrase entered Anchorage speech during a murder trial in 1959. | Spenard | From the place | Well attested |
| sterlinghilliteNamed for the hill, not the museum that now occupies the mine inside it. | Sterling Hill | From the place | Well attested |
| storrowBoston has a verb for a specific accident that happens on one road every September. | Storrow Drive | From the place | Well attested |
| take a wrong turn at AlbuquerqueBugs Bunny travels by tunnel, so one missed turn under New Mexico explains every wrong country he surfaces in. | Albuquerque | From the place | Well attested |
| Tennessee quick stepSoldiers named the war's biggest killer after the hurried walk it forced on them. | Tennessee | From the place | Well attested |
| Texas heart shotHunters named the shot after a state, and nobody agrees which joke about the state was meant. | Texas | From the place | Disputed |
| Texas mickeyA bottle named for Texas that is sold almost nowhere but Canada. | Texas | From the place | Well attested |
| TexpatTexans abroad borrowed the vocabulary of expatriates, as though leaving the state were leaving the country. | Texas | Indirect | Well attested |
| Utah curlsA hairstyle that got a state's name from the people describing it, not the people wearing it. | Utah | From the place | Well attested |
| valley girlA father recorded his fourteen-year-old daughter imitating her classmates, and a suburb north of Hollywood ended up naming a manner of speech. | San Fernando Valley | From the place | Well attested |
| virginiumAn element named for Virginia that turned out never to have been detected at all. | Virginia | From the place | Well attested |
| BaltimorgueBaltimore and morgue share enough letters that the joke assembles itself. | Baltimore | From the place | Well attested |
| DearbornistanThe suffix does all the work: change the ending and a Detroit suburb is reclassified as foreign territory. | Dearborn | From the place | Well attested |
| FilthadelphiaThe city named for brotherly love picked up a second name from its garbage. | Philadelphia | From the place | Well attested |
| KensuckyOne consonant swap turns a state's name into a verdict on the state. | Kentucky | From the place | Well attested |
| ShitsburghA city was insulted so publicly that its own newspapers would print only the rhyme. | Pittsburgh | From the place | Well attested |
| sweet home AlabamaA 1974 rock anthem became shorthand for an accusation nobody spells out. | Alabama | From the place | Well attested |