The Midwest is a large central region of the United States. It is not one official line on every map — people argue over the edges — but it usually means the northern middle of the country: the Great Lakes states and the farming plains, places like Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and their neighbours. The name is mid- plus West: to the young United States on the Atlantic, this land was 'the West,' and the name stuck after the country grew farther west still. So it is not 'the middle of the west' in a neat compass way; it is a historical nickname that became a region. People talk about Midwestern farms, factories around the lakes, and a plain, friendly way of speaking. 'Flyover country' is a rude outsider name for much the same stretch. Write it with a capital M. You use it as a place name: 'She grew up in the Midwest.'