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The sign that explains half the vocabulary: Up-Island one way, Edgartown the other.
The words you will hear on Martha's Vineyard and what they mean: up-island and down-island, on-island and off, going to America, the boats, wash-ashore versus native, Five Corners, the Triangle, the Blinker, Chappy, OB, the Campground, the Derby, the Fair, island cars and the Vineyard shuffle, with pronunciations.
You will be on the island about an hour before someone says something you do not quite follow. A shopkeeper asks if you came over on the boat. A rental agent says the house is up-island. Someone at the bar mentions going to America for the weekend. None of it is meant to exclude you; it is just how a small island talks about itself. This is our glossary, sorted by where you will hear each word, written by people who use them every day. Where a term has a disputed meaning, and a couple of them start arguments, we say so.
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Directional signs at an Edgartown intersection: Katama and West Tisbury one way, Chappaquiddick and Edgartown Center the other. Up-island is the West Tisbury arrow.
Up-island and down-island. The words that matter most. Down-island is the eastern end, the three towns with the ferries and the shops: Vineyard Haven, Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. Up-island is everything west: West Tisbury, Chilmark, Aquinnah and the village of Menemsha. The up and down come from sailing, where you go up in longitude as you head west, and they have nothing to do with hills. Up-island is quieter, darker at night, has no bars and almost no shops, and when a house is described as up-island that is the whole point of it.
On-island and off-island. You are on-island once the boat docks. Off-island is everywhere else, and it is used as an adjective for anything that had to be shipped: off-island contractors, off-island prices, an off-island plate on a car in the wrong lane at Five Corners.
America. The mainland. Islanders say it half seriously: going to America for a dentist appointment, for Costco, for a flight. The Vineyard Gazette has been recording the phrase for decades. Say it yourself only once you have earned it.
The boats. The ferries, and in particular the Steamship Authority. The first thing an islander asks in a storm is whether the boats are running, because if they are not, nothing and nobody moves. Being stuck on the other side is the island's version of a snow day. Our bus page and ferry notes explain how tight that schedule gets in winter.
The Rock. The island itself, in the mock-weary voice of someone who lives on it. Also the name of a local radio station, which tells you how established the joke is.
Five Corners. The junction in Vineyard Haven where State Road, Beach Road and Water Street meet by the ferry, with no lights, no roundabout, and a summer traffic pattern based entirely on eye contact and waving. If someone tells you to avoid Five Corners at four o'clock, believe them. The parking guide explains why.
The Triangle. The commercial corner where Beach Road meets the Edgartown to Vineyard Haven road on the Edgartown side: gas, groceries, wine, the second most congested spot on the island.
The Blinker. Old-timers still use it for the crossroads of Barnes Road and the Edgartown to Vineyard Haven road, where a single flashing light hung for decades. It has been a roundabout since 2013, the island's first, and it took a bitter town-meeting fight to build. Plenty of people still call it the blinker.
Chappy. Chappaquiddick, the island off Edgartown that is sometimes attached to the main island by a strip of sand and sometimes not. You reach it on the On Time, the three-car ferry that has no timetable and is therefore never late. See our Chappaquiddick guide.
OB. Oak Bluffs, the only town that goes by its initials in speech. Nobody says VH out loud; they say Vineyard Haven, or Tisbury when they mean the town government rather than the harbor village. The two names cover the same place, which confuses everyone at least once.
The Campground. Not a place to pitch a tent. It is the Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting Association in Oak Bluffs, the circle of gingerbread cottages around the Tabernacle where the Methodist tents once stood. Illumination, without the Grand or the Night, is the August evening when every cottage hangs its lanterns.
Circuit Ave. Oak Bluffs' main street, always shortened. Nobody says Circuit Avenue except on a postal address.
Beetlebung Corner. The crossroads in Chilmark by the general store and the community center, named for the tupelo trees whose hard wood made mallets (beetles) and bungs for barrels.
State Beach. Joseph Sylvia State Beach, the long strip along Beach Road between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. The Jaws Bridge is the American Legion Memorial Bridge at its northern end, which the film made famous and which we write about carefully, because the signs there mean what they say.
Squibby, the Lagoon, Tashmoo. Squibnocket Beach in Chilmark; the Lagoon Pond that the Vineyard Haven drawbridge crosses; and Lake Tashmoo, the pond behind West Chop. Islanders drop the words beach, pond and lake and expect you to keep up.
Five Corners in spring, before the eye-contact season begins.
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Native. Born here, and nothing else. Islanders use the word for island-born people; the Wampanoag, further down, were here before anyone.
Islander. The disputed word. To the strictest, only a native is an islander. To most, anyone who lives here year-round and has for a good while. The Martha's Vineyard Times once ran a tongue-in-cheek scoring system for the argument, which tells you how seriously it is taken.
Wash-ashore. Someone who moved here for good but was born somewhere else. It is said fondly more often than not, and plenty of wash-ashores have lived here forty years and run the town. You do not get to call yourself one after a summer.
Summer people. The seasonal residents who own or rent for the season. Not an insult, but not a compliment either. Day-trippers and week-long renters are visitors, which is what you are, and there is nothing wrong with it.
Summer staff, J-1s. What islanders often call the summer help: the international students and seasonal workers who staff the island from May to August; our explainer on the summer workforce says who they are and why there are so many.
Wampanoag. The people who were here first and still are: the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), federally recognized, whose land and language gave the island most of its place names. Our guide to visiting Aquinnah respectfully covers what that means in practice.
The Derby. The Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby, five weeks of fishing from mid-September, with a weigh-in on Edgartown's Dock Street and a grand prize that gets decided by drawing a key. If a shop says closed for the Derby, that is a complete sentence.
The Fair. The Agricultural Fair in West Tisbury, four days in August: oxen, woodsmen, the skillet throw and the best fried food of the year.
Illumination, Tivoli Day, the Fireworks. Oak Bluffs' three summer nights: lanterns in the Campground in August, the Circuit Avenue street fair in September, and the August fireworks over Ocean Park. Dates for all of them are on our events calendar.
Shoulder season. May to mid-June and September to October, the weeks locals recommend and quietly prefer. Ferries run, most things are open, and the beaches are empty by four.
A car crossing on the On Time III. Islanders say “the Chappy ferry” and never “the On Time”, even though that is the name on the boat.
“Slow down, we love our children”: the hand-painted roadside sign that shows up on up-island lanes every summer.
Island car. A vehicle that has never left and never will: rust, no inspection sticker anyone can read, a bumper sticker from a business that closed in 1998. Driven proudly. Do not park next to one too closely.
The Shuffle. Renting out your own house for July and August and moving into a shed, a boat or your mother's spare room, because two summer months can pay a winter's mortgage. You will hear it called the Vineyard shuffle. It explains why the person who checks you into your rental looks tired.
Year-rounder. Anyone here in February. The population is roughly five times bigger in August than in winter, and the year-rounders are the ones who know which restaurant is open on a Tuesday in March. Our year-round guide is written from that side.
Dry town. A town that does not sell alcohol. Chilmark still is one; the others have loosened up over the years, with rules that differ block by block. The dry towns guide has the map.
The bus. The VTA, and the number matters: the 13 to Edgartown, the 1 along the harbor, the 4 or 5 up-island. Islanders say pull the cord, not press the button, though newer buses have both. The VTA guide has the routes.
The On Time III, which has no schedule and is therefore never late.
A few place names trip visitors, so, roughly: Aquinnah is ah-KWIN-ah; Menemsha is meh-NEM-sha; Katama is ka-TAY-ma; Tisbury is TIZ-bree; Chappaquiddick everybody shortens to Chappy for a reason; and Sengekontacket, the pond behind State Beach, is seng-ee-kon-TACK-et, and nobody will mind if you just say the pond. Most of these are Wampanoag words. Aquinnah is usually translated as land under the hill, and Chappaquiddick as separated island, which is exactly what it is.
The tribe’s sign at the cliffs in Aquinnah, with both names on it.
The Vineyard Gazette has collected island words going back to the whaling days, and a few still surface in older mouths. Someone who is keel out is exhausted. Someone astern of the lighter is late. Off-island and up-island are on the same old list, which is how long they have been in use. Nobody expects you to say any of it; noticing is enough.
Do not call it Martha's Vineyard Island, or the Vineyards, or Nantucket. Do not say you are on the Cape. Do not ask an islander where the vineyards are, because there is one winery and the name is older than it. And if you do want to sound like you belong, the fastest way is the simplest: say Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs in full, wave at the four-way stop, and ask whether the boats are running. Our rules and etiquette guide covers the rest.
Definitions of islander, native and wash-ashore follow the Martha's Vineyard Times' 2019 discussion of the question; the historic island words are from the Vineyard Gazette's Word Wise column; the road names, town nicknames and event names are the ones we and our neighbors use, and every place on this page is one we have driven through this month. Where a word is contested we have said so rather than pick a side.
Down-island is the eastern end, the three ferry towns of Vineyard Haven, Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. Up-island is everything west: West Tisbury, Chilmark, Aquinnah and Menemsha. The terms come from sailing, where you go up in longitude heading west; they have nothing to do with hills.
It means the mainland, said half seriously: to America for the dentist, for Costco, for a flight. The Vineyard Gazette has recorded the phrase for decades. Use it yourself only once you have earned it.
The ferries, the Steamship Authority above all. The first question in a storm is whether the boats are running, because if they are not, nothing moves. Being stuck on the other side is the island’s snow day.
The junction in Vineyard Haven by the ferry where State Road, Beach Road and Water Street meet, with no lights and no roundabout; the summer traffic pattern runs on eye contact and waving. Avoid it at four o’clock.
The island itself, in the mock-weary voice of someone who lives on it. A local radio station carries the name too, which tells you how established the joke is.
Keep Reading
Island tip of the day Transport No. 11 of 86 New tip at midnight, island time
Uber and Lyft operate on MV but surge hard in peak season. Local taxis are often steadier: a typical cross-town ride runs about $28, van-pool style, and airport pickups add a small rideshare surcharge.
Joshua Slocum, first to sail alone around the world, spent his last years farming in West Tisbury and vanished from Vineyard Haven harbor in November 1909. The voyage, the farm called Fag End, the last departure, and what a visitor can actually see: the harbor, a marker stone by a country road, the museum's Slocum papers, and the book itself.
Who summered where on Martha's Vineyard, and what a visitor can actually see: Eisenstaedt's Menemsha, Benton's Chilmark, Cronkite's Edgartown harbor, Styron and Buchwald in Vineyard Haven, McCullough and Katharine Graham in West Tisbury, Belushi's grave at Abel's Hill, and the Onassis farm in Aquinnah that opened to the public in 2025. Public places named, private homes left alone.
The red bus that gets the loudest cheer in the Edgartown Fourth of July parade belongs to Camp Jabberwocky, a tuition-free summer camp for people with disabilities that has run on the Vineyard since 1953. An islander's account of where it came from and what it is. For anything official, the camp's own site is the source.
The Feast of the Holy Ghost in Oak Bluffs, held every third full weekend of July since 1928: the Queen Isabel legend behind the free soup, the Sunday parade from the ferry up Circuit Avenue, the crown blessed at Our Lady Star of the Sea, the sopas at the Portuguese-American Club, the club the rest of the year, and how a visitor should behave at the island's Portuguese feast.
East Chop Lighthouse in Oak Bluffs: the 1878 cast-iron tower on Telegraph Hill, the Sunday sunset openings run by the Martha's Vineyard Museum, the semaphore and Chocolate Lighthouse history, and the bus stop and parking below the hill.
The Hallmark Martha's Vineyard Mysteries are not filmed on Martha's Vineyard: Victoria, British Columbia plays the island on screen. But the books behind the movies are pure Vineyard, and the real places are better than the set.
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