Monday, October 20, 2008

More Field Notes

"I saw my boy on MySpace with a transsexual jawn."

Opening up the mail bag

Our first out-of-region jawn sighting comes from William in Indianapolis:

"i was listening to the russ parr morning show this morning and they were playing clips of john mccain and barack obama from the al smith dinner, which is kind of like a roast from what i can gather. there's a good article about it here: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/mccain-and-obama-palling-around-must-be-the-al-smith-dinner/.

"at any rate, mr. parr said that mccain and obama were "jawning on each other," or, at least, i thought maybe that's what he said. it sounded more like "joning" to me, but isn't that the way you said it was pronounced? i wouldn't have thought much of it except that i've been waiting to hear an instance of jawn on the show since it's nationally syndicated. i'm not sure, but he was talking to a comedian who was going to be in DC for the weekend and it sounded like he was talking as if the show were based in DC. just a quick bit of research seems to point to that being true and, as we know, jawn is in DC."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Parr

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Long Jawns

From Alice:

"The weather is getting chilly, and I think it might be appropriate."


A Jawns Image Search

Schooled on Jawns

If I had any shame, I would probably delete the first post on the Jawns Jawn in which I assume that, because I only began hearing the word jawn at an epidemic rate in the last 9 months, it's a recently-coined term. My roommate (mentioned in the same post) conducted an informal survey at her office last week. How old is the term? Her co-workers' average guess was 10 years. Then, just last night at a party, another friend claimed to have seen a behind-the-scenes documentary on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in which West Philadelphia's favorite son Will Smith drops jawn--at least 10, if not 15, years ago.

At any rate, even though it's an apparently an old school Philly term, these same Philly natives agree that it's resurged lately. So, the blog is still in business, and the three of us will continue to document our search for as many possible shades of meaning as we can find attributed in actual speech to the word jawn. You can help, too. Please send your overheard conversations to demjawns@gmail.com.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

A Jawnversation

Int. Two guys in a classroom talking about girls

A: [emphatically] You know. You see her all the time. The boney jawn.

B: The dark-skinned boney jawn?

A: You know the jawn.

Might as Well Face It...

I'm addicted to jawns.

More field notes:

I'm 'bouta ace this jawn right here. [English test]

We gotta do these definition jawns on the back? [dangling jawn]

I need my jawn to get to school in. [car]

I got this Family Guy jawn on my phone. [episode]

My jawn was negative. [drug test]

That's the funny jawn... [It's funny when that happens]

I was chilling in the jawn like this, ... [bathroom, receiving oral sex]

I'm 'bouta go back to Disney World, dog. That jawn was poppin'. [place/amusement park]

I got smoking jawn. [smoking cessation classes]

I'm going to kill that jawn. [bug]