A Scrabble Loss Cost One Man 10 Years of Letter-Writing. He Got “Yooper” Into the Dictionary — and They Botched the Entry.

Sometime in the early 2000s, a man in Delta County played the word Yooper in a friendly game of Scrabble. His opponent challenged it. They opened the dictionary to settle the argument the way you are supposed to — and the word was not in there.

He lost the point. Then he spent the next decade making sure it could never happen to anybody again.

Steve Parks, the prosecuting attorney for Delta County, started writing letters to Merriam-Webster. Not one letter. Years of them. He got to know an associate editor there named Emily Brewster, and the two of them began a correspondence that would outlast most marriages of convenience. As Parks told WWJ in Detroit about that first Scrabble night, his friend “called me out on the word yooper” — and he was right to.

The burden of proof

Here is the part most people do not know: getting a word into the dictionary is not a popularity contest, and Merriam-Webster was not going to take a Yooper’s word for it. Lexicographers needed evidence that Yooper had crossed the line from local slang into documented, widespread, self-explanatory use — that it showed up in print without anybody stopping to define it.

So Parks mailed her the evidence. Newspaper clippings. Product labels. Chocolate bars. Refrigerator magnets. Anything he could find with the word stamped on it, shipped downstate to Massachusetts, year after year, in what he described as his Yooper way of thanking her for taking it seriously.

The word itself is older than the fight over it, though pinning down its birth is genuinely hard. More than one person clearly looked at “U.P.-er” and heard Yooper. Two of the earliest documented sightings both land in 1979: a “Yooper Doopers” comic strip that ran in the Daily Mining Gazette, and a contest the Escanaba Daily Press held that year asking readers to invent a name for people who live up here. Other entries were submitted. Yooper is the one that stuck to the ribs.

Monday, March 24, 2014

The announcement came at a press conference in the commission chambers of Escanaba City Hall, with Brewster Skyped in from Springfield to deliver the verdict herself. Yooper had made the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, in print and online:

Yooper, noun: a native or resident of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan — used as a nickname.

It went in alongside 149 other new entries that year, which tells you something about the company it keeps. Selfie made the same list. So did hashtag, tweep, fracking, pho, and turducken. A decade of letters from Escanaba, and the word landed in the dictionary the same season as a boneless chicken stuffed inside a boneless duck stuffed inside a boneless turkey.

Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, Peter Sokolowski, defended the call publicly: the word had graduated from regional to general usage. He was not wrong. By then the U.P. had a band called Da Yoopers and a Jeff Daniels movie named after the very city where the announcement was being made.

And then they botched it

Yoopers read the new entry, and Yoopers being Yoopers, somebody checked the fine print. The pronunciation guide was wrong. A letter had gone missing.

A company spokeswoman confirmed it to reporters without much ceremony — “a ‘p’ is missing from the pronunciation” — adding that the rest of the entry was fine. Ten years of letters, chocolate bars, and refrigerator magnets to get the word into the most respected dictionary in America, and the entry came out of the gate limping.

Nobody up here seemed to mind much. The point was never the typography. Parks put it plainly to reporters that year: “People up here, we really do have our own identity” and our own culture. That is the whole argument, and it took ten years and a Scrabble loss to get it printed.

You can see the evidence for yourself without ever opening a dictionary. It is in the pasty in the gas station warmer and the cudighi nobody downstate can pronounce. It is in the sauna that got built before the house and the deer camp that runs on its own calendar. The word was always real. In 2014 it finally got the paperwork.

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Sources, credits, and reporting details

Sources & accountability

How this story was reported

Editorial methodArchival synthesis

Last verifiedJul. 22, 2026

Corrections statusNo material correction note is recorded on this article.

Verification note: Initial ledger, verified 2026-07-22 during publication prep. The Scrabble origin, decade-long campaign, March 24 2014 announcement, dictionary entry wording and the pronunciation error were checked against contemporaneous reporting. Three short quotations, each under fifteen words and each from a different source, all attributed and linked. Word-origin claims from 1979 are attributed to the regional source that documented them. Featured image CC BY-SA 3.0, credit Royalbroil, resized without cropping. No AI-generated or AI-assisted media.

Primary sources

1. Yooper to be added to the dictionary — CBS Detroit / WWJ Newsradio 950

   Featured image record. Accessed Jul. 22, 2026. Copyright CBS; brief quotation with attribution.

   Supports: Parks was challenged on the word during a Scrabble game and found it absent from the dictionary; began a decade-long quest; built a relationship with a Merriam-Webster editor and mailed chocolate bars and refrigerator magnets as proof; had to show it was not merely a local expression; definition a native or resident of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan; Merriam-Webster representatives planned an August visit.

   Sole quotation from this source is an eight-word Parks fragment.

Additional reporting

1. So, Yooper added to da dictionary, eh? — Associated Press via The Columbus Dispatch

   Featured image record. Published May. 20, 2014. Accessed Jul. 22, 2026. Copyright AP; brief quotation with attribution.

   Supports: Yooper was among 150 new words announced for the Collegiate Dictionary 11th edition and the free online database; the entry contained an error, with a company spokeswoman confirming a missing p in the pronunciation while the rest of the entry was fine; editor at large Peter Sokolowski said the word had crossed from regional to general usage; references to the band Da Yoopers and the film Escanaba in da Moonlight.

   Sole quotation from this source is a seven-word spokeswoman fragment.

2. Holy Wah! Yooper added to Merriam-Webster dictionary — Sunny.FM (Marquette)

   Featured image record. Published Mar. 25, 2014. Accessed Jul. 22, 2026. Copyright Sunny.FM; cited.

   Supports: Announcement made March 24, 2014 at a media conference in the commission chambers of Escanaba City Hall, with Merriam-Webster associate editor Emily Brewster joining by Skype; inclusion in the 2014 Collegiate Dictionary eleventh edition in print and online; the effort credited to Steve Parks and years of letters.

3. Oh ya, Yooper is a word now — Minnesota Brown (Aaron J. Brown)

   Featured image record. Published May. 25, 2014. Accessed Jul. 22, 2026. Copyright Minnesota Brown; brief quotation with attribution.

   Supports: Parks is the county prosecutor for Delta County, seated in Escanaba; he wrote letters citing the word in product names and unexplained newspaper usage; his identity remark to the New York Daily News about Upper Peninsula culture.

   Sole quotation from this source is a nine-word Parks fragment.

4. Selfie among 149 words, phrases added to Merriam-Webster dictionary — CBS News / Associated Press

   Featured image record. Accessed Jul. 22, 2026. Copyright CBS/AP; cited.

   Supports: Yooper and 149 other words or phrases were added to the eleventh edition; other additions included spoiler alert, hashtag, selfie, tweep, pho, turducken and cap and trade.

5. The definition of Yooper — Yooper Steez / UP Supply Co.

   Featured image record. Published Mar. 25, 2014. Accessed Jul. 22, 2026. Copyright UP Supply Co.; cited.

   Supports: The exact origin of the word is difficult to trace and more than one person independently shortened U.P.-er; Dan Rosandich Yooper Doopers comic first appeared in the Mining Gazette in 1979; the Escanaba Daily Press held a 1979 contest inviting readers to propose a demonym, with other entries submitted alongside Yooper.

   Regional retailer that has documented the word history; origin claims attributed rather than asserted as settled.

Photo and media credits

1. Upper Michigan Welcome Sign I75.jpg — Royalbroil / Wikimedia Commons

   Featured image record. Accessed Jul. 22, 2026. CC BY-SA 3.0; credit Royalbroil.

   Supports: Featured image: the welcome sign for travelers entering the Upper Peninsula. Local copy resized without cropping.

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