As someone born and raised in Canada, I often find myself involved in conversations about different spoken accents and vernaculars. Unfortunately, there are very few topics that I find less interesting.

When someone expresses amusement when I let slip an “eh,” I can’t help but wonder if they are amused by the realization that there are, in fact, other places in the world than right here. Maybe that’s a little unforgiving.

My boredom during these conversations notwithstanding, there is one aspect of the differentiation among America’s many vernaculars that affords me eternal beguilement. Eternal beguilement! Can you imagine? Move over, quantum mechanics.

When ordering a sandwich or a pizza or a waffle at Waffle House if you’re down South, one is often compelled to ask the server to put everything on it.

One needs to make it clear that one wants the food to be taken to the max. This is a moment that is predicated by the desire for a hand-held horn of plenty, a bountiful explosion of snack. This is not a moment about particulars.

No “hold the” or “easy on the” just wrapper-soaking, dripping-down-the-arm, shirt-staining, big-gulping consumption.

A special moment that here in North America is elevated to a puzzling degree of significance, judging from fast-food advertising.

What do you say when you’re jonesing for that kind of solo face-feeding frenzy? I have recently discovered that the answer depends on where you are.

Growing up in the frozen Northlands, my friends and I ordered our pizzas all dressed. My housemate Jessie, from North Carolina, informs me that when you want the max you ask the server to “take it all the way” (which, if you ask me, is a little unnerving). My Virginian housemate Page prefers to ask the server to “pile it on,” and while I was traveling in Louisiana over Winter Term I was advised to order “all the fixins.”

In Chicago if you order a hot dog with “the works” you’ll get chili, mustard and onions.

These regional conventions don’t appear to be used in fast food restaurants. This contributes to the homogenization of American food culture, a process which I believe is well underway.

Each fast food restaurant has its own trademarked language, where verbs such as “to Biggie” or “to Supersize” have emerged and are now understood by pretty much everyone.

In New York, “the works” can be interpreted a number of different ways. Here are two ways of serving hot dogs, all of which have been identified as containing “the works:”

Bacon, American cheese, mustard. Chili, onions, mustard.

—Kathryn Jezer-Morton