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

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

#11

Post by sgarman »

fredfoobar42 wrote: post #5

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.

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.

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

#12

Post by rroblak »

apalmer wrote: post #2

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...

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

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

#13

Post by [deleted] »

apalmer wrote: post #2

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...

[deleted]

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

#14

Post by santaclaus »

percept wrote: post #10
greydius wrote: post #7

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?)

Sprinkles. But they're wrong.

Hundreds and thousands.

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

#16

Post by cpa »

apalmer wrote: post #2

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...

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?

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

#17

Post by nommm-nommm »

greydius wrote: post #7

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?)

Jimmies is very common in New England as well.

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

#20

Post by 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).

"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.

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