Bay Stater
1
8.5
- noun
- /beɪ ˈsteɪtər/
- US
:
habitante de Massachusetts
- As a lifelong resident, I can confidently say that Bay Staters take great pride in their state's history.
Examples
-
Nonetheless, the social and economic conditions of black Bay Staters did not change much and even deteriorated in the Hub city, especially after the turn of the century, as contemporary observers and later historians have noted.
Academic text (2002) -
Question 3 is one of those feel-good measures that Bay Staters just love.
Blog text (29) -
Thus congressmen from Massachusetts, who fought for the federal Civil Rights Bill in the forty-third Congress, emphasized again and again that Bay Staters did not treat all classes of black men equally any more than they "make all classes of white men sit at the same table or sleep in the same bed."
Academic text (2002) -
Really not sure of the first name, but the "father" of the gerrymander was Eldridge Gerry from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, so it is fitting that Rep. Frank, a Bay Stater, would pronounce it correctly.
Blog text (21) -
Many Bay Staters enjoy the beautiful scenery of the Cape Cod coastline during the summer.
-
Bay Staters often gather to celebrate local traditions, like the annual Boston Marathon.
Surface Forms
Morphology
Bay + stater
The element 'stater' transparently signals 'a resident of a state', so the compound form suggests 'resident of [the] Bay'. However, identifying 'Bay' specifically with Massachusetts requires cultural/world knowledge (the nickname 'The Bay State'), which is not derivable from the lexical meanings alone, so the meaning is only partially predictable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Bay Stater comes from Massachusetts' nickname, 'the Bay State', because the coast has many bays and towns grew near them. So a Bay Stater — literally a Stater from the Bay — means 'a person from Massachusetts'.