The Enduring Mystery of 'Jawn', Philadelphia's All-Purpose Noun
atlasobscura.com
atlasobscura.com
Stuff like this is why I think "jawn" is the fuckin' jawn.
"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.
* 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.
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.
Thingy
Thing-Ummy_Bob
whatchmacallit
>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.
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.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/dc-slang...
"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.