
The Enduring Mystery of ‘Jawn,’ Philadelphia’s All-Purpose Noun (2016) - tylerbainbridge
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-enduring-mystery-of-jawn-philadelphias-allpurpose-noun
======
auto
Quite a few people in the comments are asking why you couldn't just use the
word "thing", I'll try my best to explain.

I grew up in northeastern PA, but my dad lived on the outskirts of Philly, and
I went to school not far from the city, with a large population of Philly
natives, so I got a decent amount of exposure to jawn usage from different
walks of life.

Jawn has a few different uses, but I feel most often it was meant to blend
plural and singular explanations of things, or to encapsulate the
generalization of a topic. It can replace "thing" or "stuff" or "shit" (when
shit is used like "that's my shit"). But it isn't just about replacement, as
I've heard the phrase "that shit's my jawn", or "all that jawn stuff". It
almost can be used as a replacement, or a doubling/accent of any word in a
sentence, as long as you know what you're doing.

For instance, if someone was at your house and saw you had soft pretzels, they
might say "Let me get some of that pretzel jawn". They didn't really ask for
one pretzel, but you would know that's what they wanted, or they want at least
one. Another common usage was if someone was talking about something they
didn't know a ton of details of. I studied Math and Comp Sci at school, and if
I was studying and a friend who knew nothing about it came over, they might
see me working and say "You all caught up in your computer jawn?". Not sure
how ubiquitous this usage is, but we also used to digress into nearly
nonsensical usages, and say stuff like "What's all this jawn jawn", which
somehow was understood as emphasizing your disapproval, or lack of
understanding of whatever the subjecting of the jawn-ing was.

I don't know if I'm doing it justice, and it isn't until I really tried to
flesh out my understanding of a word that I realized how difficult it could
be, but maybe that helps someone understand.

~~~
burke
I still don't feel like this is more than 5% different from a combination of
"thing" and "shit" in colloquial Canadianese.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Ditto from Kentucky.

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sfkdjf9j3j
Interesting linguistics but as someone who spent a few years living in Philly
I think the use of "jawn" is a little overstated here. I lived in both black
and white working class areas, as well as gentrified/young professional areas
such as nolibs and (to a lesser extent) fishtown.

You know who says "jawn" the most? The kids of the upper middle class who grew
up in ardmore/wynnwood/bala cynwyd/merion/etc. and moved to the city and now
employ working class affectations to prove their authenticity.

~~~
schnable
It definitely jumped the shark and is now fetishized by white millennials.

~~~
dfxm12
After Creed came out, it has become part of the English lexicon, more or less.
Kinda like what Rocky did for "yo".

~~~
novacole
I’ve been using Jawn since I was a child in the early 90s. I remember my
grandfather who was born in the 30s using it.

~~~
MisterOctober
yep -- first time I heard it was on Dj Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince's "I'm
All That" circa 1991. "...set my sights on making a record that people thought
was a hype jawn." I was living in New England at the time and all the middle
school kids [including me] started saying it shortly thereafter.

We generally assumed it was a synonym for "joint" [as described in the linked
article] in the sense of "unit of work," e.g. "A Spike Lee Joint"

[p.s. for the record, "Homebase" is an outstanding LP that still sounds great
today]

------
gerbilly
The word 'da kine' in Hawaiian pidgin is similar.

The thing with da kine is that it is never used to refer to something one is
not sure about.

When someone says to you: "Why didn't you come to Queens with us yesterday,
the waves were da kine!", they mean the waves were the kind of waves that I
know you like.

The author of the article above also wrote:
[https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/da-kine-hawaiian-
pidgi...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/da-kine-hawaiian-pidgin) on
the subject of 'da kine.'

~~~
bitwize
Speaking of waves, the article also mentions modern usage of "awesome" meaning
great or cool rather than terrifying. The crossover of meanings was in surfer
culture, where terrifying _was_ great. Surfers sought waves that were awesome
(meaning terrifying), radical (meaning severe), or even tubular (meaning they
curled over so hard they nearly formed a tube on the water) because those were
the most fun to ride. I like that despite sounding silly (especially since the
80s are long behind us), these terms have real meanings and histories.

Then again, maybe the connection goes deeper. There are plenty of languages
that have words that once meant "terrifying" and now mean "superb"; compare
English _terrific_ and Japanese _subarashii_ (whose original meaning was
"causes you to shrink (with fright)"). Maybe we just instinctually
simultaneously fear power and admire it, and that gets encoded into our
speech. Christians are taught both that God is good, and that he should be
feared.

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msmedes
I went to school in Philly and the moment that really crystalized both my
understanding of the word jawn and the city as a whole was a truck driver
screaming at a PPA agent trying to hand him a ticket: "This donk ain't my jawn
yo!"

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empath75
Its interesting that the article posits that it came from a song released in
1981 and then mentions that there was a recording in 1981 of someone already
using the word in its current expansive way, and must have already started
developing by the late 70s.

Growing up in the dc area, joint and junk were sort of merged together and
there was a word kind of like jawnks. “That’s my jawnks.”

~~~
soylentcola
Not to be confused with the (I believe) DC/PG County verb "joan". To "joan on"
someone was to tease them or "break balls".

I heard this all the time in the late 80's and early 90's but never really
afterward. Not sure if they are at all related since the meaning and usage is
so different.

~~~
southphillyman
The Philadelphia version of "joan" in the 80s/90s was "bust"....now it's
"bid". Philadelphians no longer "bust on people" they "bid on people". It's
really interesting how these things evolve. DC kids probably have an new
entirely unrelated word that essentially means joan now

~~~
soylentcola
I lived in the boonies north of DC so by the time I heard DC/PG transplant
kids using it, it was probably already old news.

We did say "bust on" a lot (more common than "joan on" where I grew up) and it
stuck around longer. Even now, 25-30 years later, I wouldn't take note if
someone said "bust on" someone--but the one time I heard someone my age say
"joan on" recently, I gave her a grin and asked if she was from PG county. She
was surprised to learn it wasn't common elsewhere.

edit: after looking into this just now, I guess it's still used farther south.
Haven't heard it in the DC/MD area in years.

~~~
nostrebored
yeah this was still common in Atlanta about 10 years ago

------
mtts
Not at all uncommon. The dialect of Brussels has something similar:
“schroumpf”. This word has become famous the world over, albeit in
translation. You likely know it as “smurf”.

~~~
duckqlz
I was unaware the smurfs lived in Brussels. From Wikipedia:

> The word “smurf” is the original Dutch translation of the French
> "schtroumpf", which, according to Peyo, is a word he invented during a meal
> with fellow cartoonist André Franquin when he could not remember the word
> salt.

~~~
mtts
Exactly, but from what I remember reading somewhere - but can’t of course now
find a source for - it wasn’t so much that he invented the word but that he
decided to use it for his comic characters. The word was in common use at the
time - and, in fact, it was Franquin that used it on that occasion, not Peyo.

------
southphillyman
Another nuance of jawn is that it could mean anything....except when it
involved gender.

Jawn when referring to a human specifically referred to a woman. "That jawn
bad" means a woman is attractive. Currently the younger crowd has a phrase
"That's a bad jawn" that means something unfortunate happened. Context is very
important when jawn is used

------
javierga
This reminds me of Venezuelan’s use of `vaina` (literally a husk), an all-
purpose catch word that I’ve seen used to supplant other words/concepts that
you don’t have at the tip of your tongue. In my native Spain I see people use
`historia` (history).

It’s not a substitute of shit, thing, and stuff, since it can be used
alongside these words and you can bring the `vaina` to the `vaina`.

Maybe the weirdness of `jawn` is it's not a word on its own therefore it
cannot cause confusion?

Non-Philly, non-US, non-native English speaker here, so please excuse me if
I’m not getting the gist of the article.

~~~
tyingq
Not recent, but perhaps words like doohickey, thingamajig, whatzit, ya-know,
etc, are similar in American English. All substitutes for _" concept/thing on
the tip of my tongue that I can't recall the correct word for right now"_.

------
rukuu001
Can any Chilenos chime in on how close ‘hueón’ is to ‘jawn’?

In Chile I heard it used to mean a person or a thing, or whatever really.

~~~
sergioj97
I'm not Chilean but my girlfriend is, and I thought of that word instantly
when I saw this.

Even though I'm not Chilean, I'm from Spain and I think I have a decent grasp
on its meaning. It can be used to refer to any person or object. I only speak
English and Spanish (fluently), but I've always assumed that there are similar
words in any language. Terms with extremely open meanings (or terms that at
least can be used that way).

Of course there are various differences. For example, I assume jawn can be
used as a verb (to jawn). "Hueón" (or usually, "weón") can't be used as a verb
by itself, but of course you have the verb "webear/huevear", that belongs to
the same word family, with the same open meaning but for any action. I don't
think, however, that this means "wueon" is less versatile than "jawn". I think
it's just because in English it's common to have a noun and a verb that look
very similar (a cut/ to cut, a mine/to mine) and in Spanish that's unusual.

As a side note, the word "huevo" means egg, and "huevón" can mean "big egg" or
refer to someone who, well, has big balls (sometimes used as a mild insult
like "dumb"). "Hueón", just as "wueón" or "webón", are all misspellings of
"huevón". My own guess is that the term evolved from that original meaning
into the wildcard it is today.

If any true Chileans show up, feel free to correct my words! And please ignore
my obvious lack of linguistics knowledge, that was just my uneducated
impression :)

------
TheRealSteel
...What about the word "thing", some variation of which is used 20 times in
the article, but never acknowledged?

------
Kaotique
Pretty cool that it can be used in so many places. More than shit, thing or
similar words.

It reminds of te Smurf language where they can use "smurf" and variants of it
as a general name for a person, replace verbs and adjectives. The meaning is
highly contextual.

------
scandox
Yoke is used pretty freely in Ireland and certainly can reference people,
things or ideas. It doesn't handle verbs though. It's thing or thingie really
but with flair.

~~~
injb
That's what I thought of when I read the article.

------
bencollier49
I don't buy this:

[https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/oojamaf...](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/oojamaflip)

[https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/thingam...](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/thingamabob)

~~~
WalterSear
Neither of those work as a plural. However, 'shit' does.

------
dx87
I grew up in Maryland, and my wife thinks it's funny that I say "wooder" and
"jimmies". I always thought it was something I picked up from my grandmother
since she was a pre-school teacher and tended to pick up pronunctions from her
students. Another word that my wife thinks is funny is "woorsh" instead of
wash.

~~~
war1025
My dad also pronounced wash as "warsh". And then orange was always "oinge".
Don't have any idea where he picked it up because none of my other relatives
pronounce them that way.

~~~
steveklabnik
"warsh" is sometimes heard in Pittsburghese.

~~~
war1025
We're from Iowa though... Obviously picked it up somewhere, but no idea who
from.

------
spodek
> _an unusual lexicon that includes words such as “hoagie” and “jimmies” (a
> sub sandwich and sprinkles, respectively)_

Also water ice, which the rest of the world calls Italian ice.

~~~
etatoby
If that's what I think it is, the rest of the world (including Italy) calls it
a Sorbet or Sherbet:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbet)

It's basically ice, fruit pulp and sugar, blended together.

~~~
numbsafari
It's as though the ratio and process of blending those ingredients together
can't possibly produce a different result...

Sorbet, Sherbet, "Italian Ice" and "Water Ice" (as experienced in Philly) are
not all the same thing.

Also, sherbet contains dairy, none of these others do.

------
ssully
My exposure from the word was from listening to The Roots, a rap group from
Philadelphia. I was able to use context clues to assume the word was mixed
purpose, but didn't get confirmation until I searched for it years after
hearing it.

On the more embarrassing side, it took me way longer then I would care to
admit to understand that "Illadelph" was slang for the name of the city.

------
timerol
At the end of the article, it talks about "bag" being pronounced like "byaeg"
or "beg", and "backpack" like "beckpeck". I'm surprised they didn't use the
common example of "bagel", which is normally pronounced the same as "bay
gull", but in Philly the first syllable is "beg".

------
habosa
The linguistics of Philadelphia and the surrounding area are some of the best-
studied in the world since UPenn pioneered the academic study of sub-dialects
of American English:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_English](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_English)

------
rubyfan
Back in the late 90s I had a roommate from Philly and used “jawn” almost every
sentence. His excuse was “I’m from Philly yo”

------
samirillian
Super-producer Diplo was once one half of Hollertronix. He had a song called
"Real Jawns"[1], the meaning of which remained a mystery for me until this
article.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtmpW6qI-
KU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtmpW6qI-KU)

------
LargeWu
My circle of friends has a similar word, but it's an all-purpose verb. The
word is "blomp".

"Blomp some sour cream on that for me"

"I'm gonna blomp over to the store"

"...and then my kid blomped me right in the head with his toy"

------
hmschreck
Somehow, in Memphis, we ended up with "junt" in a very similar use.

~~~
josephv
They say this junt "jawn" is unique like anyone cares.

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PaulAJ
How does the meaning of "jawn" differ from "thing"?

~~~
smitty1e
A thing is going to be a noun.

A jawn is a possibly uninitialized variable thrown in at random anywhere, as
far as I can jawn.

~~~
thom
Are there any uses in the article where one couldn't just say thing, things or
thingy? Half my sleep-deprived conversations with my wife are about thingying
the thing so we can thingy the other thing.

~~~
kdmccormick
Places and people, it seems.

~~~
elliekelly
It is sometimes used for places and people but now that you mention it I can
only really think of examples of it being used for slightly negative
references. I would say there’s usually some contempt behind it.

Place: “I have to go to that DMV jawn and renew my license.”

People: “Them TSA jawn opened my bag.”

Person: “She’s my ex jawn.”

It can also be used to refer to women or a woman in a belittling way. Somewhat
similar to “bitch.”

For example: “That jawn is clingy.” or “Them jawns be crazy.”

------
aamargulies
Marklar

[https://southpark.cc.com/clips/151539/welcome-to-
marklar](https://southpark.cc.com/clips/151539/welcome-to-marklar)

------
peterwwillis
Baltimore has the gender-neutral pronoun "yo":
[https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/04/25/178788893...](https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/04/25/178788893/yo-
said-what) [https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-speech/article-
abstract...](https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-speech/article-
abstract/82/3/262/5458/A-NEW-GENDER-NEUTRAL-PRONOUN-IN-BALTIMORE-MARYLAND)

------
ncmncm
In Hawaii they say Da Kine. It's a brand name now.

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turc1656
This was actually much more interesting than I thought it would be. And well-
researched.

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anonu
Reminds me of Pittsburghese. Yinz know what I'm talkin' about?

------
nchlswu
a lot of people mentioning "thing," and it's simply not used that way. That
said, "ting" of Jamaican Patois origin would be appropriate.

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shortlived
Further reading with better linguistic coverage:
[http://languagehat.com/jawn/](http://languagehat.com/jawn/)

~~~
jihadjihad
How is this "further reading"? This is just blog spam that links to the
original article and only has three sentences of its own.

~~~
shortlived
You are right. Language hat _usually_ provides more context and fantastic
discussion with their readers but not in this case. Sorry for not reading
close enough.

