The Enduring Mystery of ‘Jawn,’ Philadelphia’s All-Purpose Noun (2016)

[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.

[furyofantares]

I’d think “thang” would be a bit closer than “thing”, given your examples plus the ones in the article

[burke]

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

[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.

[novacole]

As a black Philadelphian I have to disagree. I use Jawn all the time (in non professional all settings). And so does every other black person I know. Most of the black people I know are working class and they from my estimation use Jawn the most.

Now to proper usages. It’s true you can use Jawn as a replacement for “thing”. However, you can also you it (as bad as it sounds) for women. So a common phase is “Did you get the Jawn from the Jawn?” Meaning “did you get the thing from the woman?” Or “The Jawn told me to come up to the Jawn down the street” meaning “the woman told me to go to the place down the street”. Succinctly Jawn is a person, place, thing or woman. There is no way you can overstate the usage of Jawn. I’ve used it and heard it my entire life from almost everyone I know.

[southphillyman]

Don't think this is even remotely true. Native Philadelphians, of all races, have been using jawn pretty heavily since at least the early/mid 90s. I'd be interested in which working class neighborhoods you lived in, nolibs/fishtown kind of suggests you may have been surrounded by a lot of other transplants. edit: There is a generational aspect to it as my parents and grandparents never said it. 80s/90s babies for sure. Maybe the people you encountered were relatively young (or old)

[schnable]

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

[compliance_data]

I live in Kensington and don't hear it much at all up there from either UMC or working class folks, both white and black (+ Latino + Asian for that matter). I've heard it 100% from black folks in West Philly (can't tell socioeconomic if UMC or working class though). I haven't heard it much from UMC white folks but I don't spent a lot of time with them so might just be sample bias.

[swebs]

Go to Rhawnhurst. People won't stop saying it. Oddly enough, it's rare to hear in Mayfair or Tacony.

[JustSomeNobody]

> Interesting linguistics but as someone who spent a few years living in Philly I think the use of "jawn" is a little overstated here.

This is like a Canadian who says he doesn't say "eh". Eh.

NB: This is meant to be light-hearted based on experience.

[dfxm12]

to prove their authenticity.

Ironically, it makes them stand out as obviously being from out of town.

[alexbanks]

Yeah this is not at all correct.

[king_panic]

This comment nails it. I lived in Kensington and never heard it. In early adulthood, I lived with upper/middle-class whites from the outskirts of Philadelphia and heard it regularly. This is an affection adopted by those on the periphery to signal they are not on the periphery.

[caymanjim]

I grew up in South Jersey, spent most of my life there, and I've never heard of "jawn". I don't doubt that it exists, but it certainly seems overstated. I've spent some time in Philly proper, Manayunk, working class neighborhoods, college neighborhoods, and with large groups of Philly transplants in New York. Maybe it was said around me and just got lost in conversation, but I have no recollection of it at all, so I wonder how ubiquitous it really is.

[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... on the subject of 'da kine.'

[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!"

[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.”

[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”.

[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.

[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.

[bencollier49]

I don't buy this:

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/oojamaf...

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/thingam...

[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.

[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.

[jghn]

Jimmies is a common phrase in New England, so definitely not just a Philly thing

[xntrk]

I thought they were actually slightly different things. Italian ice being much harder and water ice being softer. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/08/10/489217423/wa... the wikipedia seems to imply they are they same.

[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

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

[markkanof]

Also, at least among my peers in the Philly area, jimmies were the brown/chocolate ones, sprinkles were the multicolored ones.

[Sean1708]

And for those of us that are neither from Philadelphia nor the rest of the world, it's apparently similar to a sorbet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_ice

[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

[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