Quoted: In a 2014 Wisconsin State Journal story seeking to define Up North, Eric Raimy, a UW-Madison professor who has studied the quirks and forms of the English language in Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest, said it’s not clear when the term was first used, but it has grown to become exceptionally well understood today. “North itself is a geographical term,” Raimy told the State Journal. “But the fact that the term is Up North, that changes it from a purely geographical term to more of a social-cultural term. It can bond us.”