Pennsyltucky

"Pennsyltucky" is a slang portmanteau of the state names Pennsylvania and Kentucky. It is used to characterize—usually humorously, but sometimes deprecatingly—the rural part of the state of Pennsylvania outside the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, more specifically applied to the local people and culture of its mountainous central Appalachian region.

At times, the term is used to describe all of Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The word is a portmanteau constructed from "Pennsylvania" and "Kentucky", implying a similarity between the two states' rural sections, a connection that exists in fact after numbers of Western Pennsylvanians left the state for Kentucky after the Whiskey Rebellion. It can be used in either a pejorative or an affectionate sense.

This term is interchangeable with the slang term "The T", used primarily in political circles (e.g., "Winning the T"), because of the shape of the area of Pennsylvania when excluding Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. "The T" is considered a more politically correct term than "Pennsyltucky" when referring to potential voters without so openly insulting them.

Philadelphia in the southeast corner and Pittsburgh in the southwest corner are urban manufacturing centers, with the "t-shaped" remainder of the state being much more rural; this dichotomy affects state politics and culture as well as the state economy.

Much of the term's history evolved from the Appalachian area of Pennsylvania, which includes most of the T and most of the Pittsburgh area. Since the early 1800s, Pittsburgh has been one of America's major cities with a distinct association to the Midwest. Its geographic proximity to Ohio and West Virginia creates an Ohio River Valley feel in contrast to the metropolis of Philadelphia surrounded by Delaware and New Jersey.

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