The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-enduring-mystery-of-jawn-philadelphias-allpurpose-noun?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=slate

by Jerry2 • 10 years ago

68 52 10 years ago

atlasobscura.com

apalmer2• 10 years ago

dont understand the mystery that is attributed to 'jawn' in this article. I have known a couple slang words in my own lifetime that have been used in an all purpose manner similar to 'jawn', the only real difference is that jawn manages to remain stable, most of these generic slangs fade out relatively quickly because they are pretty much meaningless...

covercash• 10 years ago

Curious, what are the other all purpose slang words?

apalmer2• 10 years ago

The number one most similar was 'jumpoff' in NYC around 2000. Have a memory of getting a haircut on near timesquare in manhattan at this time period and a younger guy (maybe 20) talking to the older barber (maybe 30) saying, " I am got the new red and green jumpoffs to go to the jumpoff in queens tonight to bag a new spanish jumpoff" or something very similar... the barber literally had to tell the dude to repeat the sentence without using the word jumpoff... it lasted for maybe a year in common use before eventually faded out of use primarily because it had no meaning...

theoh• 10 years ago

Not the parent poster, but in Ireland there's "yoke" meaning 'a thing whose name one cannot recall, does not know, or does not wish to specify. "how much did that yoke set you back?"'

ihm• 10 years ago

I knew a group of friends who would use the word "donkey" for many many things.

ars• 10 years ago

Who-zee-dingle (not sure how it's spelled)

Thingy

Thing-Ummy_Bob

whatchmacallit

rroblak• 10 years ago

Agreed. I was surprised that the article didn't mention the Hawaiian Pidgin expression "da kine"[1], which functions similarly to "jawn". Funnily enough, the da kine Wikipedia page makes the same claim regarding uniqueness of expression.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_kine

SerLava• 10 years ago

I came here looking for a mention of da kine.

According to experts, it's unlike any word, in any language.

Some experts. I kept reading looking for a reason why it was substantially different from da kine, and the more I read, the more familiar the description sounded.

ludamad2• 10 years ago

A big problem I have with news articles: Usually they correctly state that an expert has an opinion (sure, someone thinks jawn is different for $FOO reason), but it usually has no real bearing on expert consensus, nulling the value of asking an expert.

cpa• 10 years ago

As far as I can tell, "machin", "truc" and "bidule" (which all mean "stuff" in french) have the same meaning as "jawn". I wonder what's so different about "jawn", maybe it's just used more?

JohnBooty4• 10 years ago

The "mystery" in the title is just utter clickbait.

The article itself (which is pretty good if you enjoy this sort of thing) explains precisely where the term came from! No mystery at all. It's an offshoot of "joint" which has been around in various forms for decades.

tdumitrescu• 10 years ago

The mystery is why it is so imbued with elitism, secrecy, and tradition

unfamiliar• 10 years ago

It just seems to be a similar sort of placeholder word like "thing".

OracB7• 10 years ago

Or "smurf" or "smeg".

fredfoobar42• 10 years ago

These articles on "jawn" always miss the use of "the jawn" which works in a manner similar to saying something is "the shit." In other words, the phrase "That jawn is the jawn" is a valid sentence, meaning "That thing is the best."

Stuff like this is why I think "jawn" is the fuckin' jawn.

sgarman• 10 years ago

I'm from outside (1hr) of philly and didn't immediately recognize "jawn" as written in this article. I moved away about 8 years ago and I think the word has evolved quite a bit. We used to say "juant" which seems close to "joint" as the author notes. "Pass me that juant, where did you get that juant." Haven't heard it with the hard n.

kough2• 10 years ago

I'm also from outside the city (30 minutes) and recognized it exactly as described in the article. I've never heard it as a replacement for "the shit", though -- go figure.

ams61102• 10 years ago

Makes sense, since the "all purpose word" that came to mind as something similar was "shit" which is also another all purpose noun, as well as an adjective which can mean "good" or "bad" depending on context.

xzel• 10 years ago

From 5 minutes out of Philly and went to UPenn. "Jawn" is certainly used as the all purpose noun from this article and I've never heard it used as "the shit". The only other way I have heard it used for is as a code name for a certain pill as it helps obfuscate you're talking about a drug openly.

rubyfan2• 10 years ago

I met a guy from Philly who over used "the jawn" so much we started calling him John. He was also often caught uttering phrases like "I'm from Philly yo"

chjohasbrouck• 10 years ago

I once played chess against a guy who used this word for just about everything. He made his move while I wasn't watching, I turned around and asked him what he did.

"I took your jawn with my jawn." I said "which one is John?" He said "They're all jawn."

From then on, every time I spoke to him I replaced every noun with "John." Surprisingly, even without nouns, we never had much difficulty understanding each other.

greydius• 10 years ago

I grew up northeast of philly, and definitely remember the word being pronounced more like 'joint'. But then, the closer you get to the city, the more pronounced the philly vowel slur becomes. Also, I did not realize this was a regional word (and jimmies as well. What does the rest of the country call them?)

percept• 10 years ago

Sprinkles. But they're wrong.

santaclaus• 10 years ago

Hundreds and thousands.

nommm-nommm2• 10 years ago

Jimmies is very common in New England as well.

ams61102• 10 years ago

I always laugh at that because to me "jimmie" means condom. Or penis.

imglorp• 10 years ago

Wooder and crick are dead on. Also unmentioned is "down a' shawr", meaning you're going to the shore, specifically New Jersey.

nommm-nommm2• 10 years ago

I hear crick as an alternative pronunciation all over the northeast.

jdhzzz3• 10 years ago

I grew up 30ish miles west and moved out > 40 (Yikes!) years ago. We used both crick (a small creek) and creek (a larger crick). My mother lived all her life near or around Philly (and hated that that term) and put an 'r' in wash: Warshington D.C. I don't know if that was regional or not. I can still instantly tell someone has the accent if I hear them say 'On' (the 'o' gets caught in their nose, almost if followed by a 'w') or 'now' as it sounds like an 'e' preceeds the o.

bitwize• 10 years ago

Funny, I think of it as a midwestern kind of thing. My mom's family is from Wisconsin, and crick is to them standard pronunciation.

teemonasty• 10 years ago

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jawn

nefitty• 10 years ago

A cool word I probably overuse is "sketch", which I've only ever known to be used on the West coast. I'm in Vegas, which is landlocked in the desert but we seem to be a bit of an extension of The Left Coast, Vegas being the only blue region of Nevada. As far as I can tell the word percolated down to us through alt and underground culture, primarily hitting my network through early 2000's trading of skateboard VHS tapes. A lot of our memes came from those vids, 2005's Baker 3 being the apex of that cultural transference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Skateboards#Videography).

"Sketch" is a bastardization of "sketchy", and depending on which of those variations someone in my town uses to describe a person or a situation, I know whether they'll share certain cultural touchstones with me.

kough2• 10 years ago

In my circles (think east coast top-tier university) this is being replaced by "suss", from "suspect". This comes directly from the internet.

JohnBooty4• 10 years ago

I've most definitely heard "sketch" here on the East Coast for quite some time!

ludamad2• 10 years ago

Live near Toronto, Ontario. Definitely heard 'Man that is just sketch' a lot. Probably more widespread than you think given the other responses.

pj4533• 10 years ago

A jawn is like..... http://youtu.be/wtmpW6qI-KU

nsfmc• 10 years ago

jawn is that real joint https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p5IpX9T5eM

gist• 10 years ago

Speaking of Philly words there is also a unique meaning to the word "jit". Curious if anyone knows what I am talking about.

saclark11• 10 years ago

I am from, and live, just outside Philly and I had no idea "jawn" was strictly a Philly thing (err...jawn) haha. Cool to find out it has such a unique etymology!

Grue3• 10 years ago

Japanese has a bunch of words that are used for both people and things like "mono" (もの) and "yatsu" (奴).

jawns• 10 years ago

I read this jawn and wanted to suggest some other Philly-related jawns that you might want to check out if you come to this jawn:

* TastyKakes. Not quite as delicious since the Flower Foods acquisition a few years back, but still tasty. I especially like the peanut butter cake jawns.

* Soft pretzels. Get those jawns when they're still hot.

* Cheese steak. Don't go to one of those tourist jawns. Instead, get it from a mom-and-pop corner store kind of jawn.

* Wawa. Heaven's convenience store. Once you've been to this jawn, you'll never go back to 7-Eleven.

* SEPTA. Just kidding.

* Comcast. Also just kidding.

jdhzzz3• 10 years ago

Soft pretzels with mustard.

jdhzzz3• 10 years ago

I am currently in central Connecticut and it drives me crazy that natives employ the "glottal stop" for t's in the middle of words. To my (prejudiced) ears it sounds vaguely ignorant: Bu'on for button, the town of New Bri'ain. There's a pause where the 't' was, but no sound.

freshyill• 10 years ago

I think "jawn" in Philly isn't as unique in its flexibility as the article tries to make it out to be. In DC, "jont" is apparently just as flexible.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/dc-slang...

wcoenen• 10 years ago

The artificial language Lojban[1] expresses everything as predicates. For example, the word "benji" expresses the relationship "send", and it would have parameter slots around it for the sender (x1), the thing being sent(x2), the receiver (x3), the origin (x4) and the medium (x5).

Lojban uses the word "zo'e" in the same way as jawn, to indicate an unspecified parameter in a predicate. This way you can skip over a parameter or emphasize it without specifying it. (Usually this isn't needed because x1 and x2 are most used and come right before and after the relationship word. Also, there are ways to reorder the parameters.)

There is also "co'e", which is the word for an unspecified relationship.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban

The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun

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