Devil strip:
What counts as a salient linguistic feature can vary from case to case. A famous example involved a ransom note demanding that the money be left on the “devil strip”. Asked by police to help out, linguist Roger Shuy at Georgetown University in Washington DC happened to know that “devil strip” was an extremely rare name for the grassy area between the pavement and the street – so rare, in fact, that only people in Akron, Ohio, use it. When Shuy asked the police if they had a suspect from Akron, their jaws dropped. They did, and the subject eventually confessed. [“Write yourself invisible,” Michael Erard, NewScientist (25 November 2017, paywall)]
