peoria

small city in Illinois, the name is from an Indian word said to mean "place of fat beasts." Regarded as the typical measure of U.S. cultural and intellectual standards at least since Ambrose Bierce (c.1890). Also the butt of baseball player jokes (c.1920-40, when it was part of the St. Louis Cardinals farm system) and popularized in the catchphrase "It'll play in Peoria" (usually negative) "the average American will approve," which was popular in the Nixon White House (1969-74) but seems to suggest a vaudeville origin. Peoria's rivals as embodiment of U.S. small city values and standards include Dubuque, Iowa; Hoboken and Hackensack, N.J.; Oakland (Gertrude Stein: "When you get there, there isn't any there there"), and Burbank, Calif., and the entire state of North Dakota.