
The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun - Jerry2
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-enduring-mystery-of-jawn-philadelphias-allpurpose-noun?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=slate
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fredfoobar42
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.

~~~
rubyfan
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
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.

~~~
rubyfan
Funny "I took your jawn with my jawn" is what AlphaGo said to Lee Sedol after
the first match

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

~~~
OracB7
Or "smurf" or "smeg".

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jawns
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.

~~~
jdhzzz
Soft pretzels with mustard.

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

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

~~~
jdhzzz
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.

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wcoenen
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban)

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apalmer
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
Curious, what are the other all purpose slang words?

~~~
theoh
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?"'

~~~
brownbat
See also "wossname."

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greydius
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
Sprinkles. But they're wrong.

~~~
santaclaus
Hundreds and thousands.

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freshyill
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...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/dc-slang-a-
quick-primer/2012/10/10/9d725bfc-12d8-11e2-a16b-2c110031514a_blog.html)

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pj4533
A jawn is like..... [http://youtu.be/wtmpW6qI-KU](http://youtu.be/wtmpW6qI-KU)

~~~
nsfmc
jawn is that real joint
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p5IpX9T5eM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p5IpX9T5eM)

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jdhzzz
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.

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nefitty
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](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.

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

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saclark11
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!

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teemonasty
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jawn](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jawn)

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

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Grue3
Japanese has a bunch of words that are used for both people and things like
"mono" (もの) and "yatsu" (奴).

