India-no-place

alternative Indianoplace

1. colloquialderogatoryIndianapolis.

   They were twenty-year-old twins who had just moved out from Indianapolis, or “India-no-place,” as they said. They wanted to be stars.

   1978, Benjamin Stein, Dreemz, Harper & Row, →ISBN, page 187

   3 more examples

   Hardly anybody writes odes to Indianapolis. No Sandburg or Gershwin has ever praised the Midwestern city’s hard American beauty. No bustling metropolis, that town; no seething cauldron of culture. Instead, folks mockingly called it “India-no-place.”

   1984 June 11, Jacob V. Lamar, Jr., “India-no-place No More”, in Time, →ISSN, →OCLC

   These monikers are frequently descriptive (“The Capital City”), associated with a prominent industry (“The Railroad City”), geographical (“Crossroads of America”), sports-related (home of “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing”), religiously inspired (“City of Churches”), derogatory (“Naptown,” “India-no-place,” “End-of-No-Place”), or abbreviations (“Indy”).

   1994 November 22, Deborah B. Markisohn, “Slogans and Nicknames”, in Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, →ISBN

   It has a sort of big city, whose nickname is India-no-place, but the rest of the state is composed of small towns with little opportunity.

   2025 April 7, Edward McClelland, “Hands Off, Indiana”, in Chicago, →ISSN, →OCLC