Emily Guendelsberger, “The Etymology of ‘Jawn’” (City Paper, Mar. 18, 2014)
Jawn’s been in the news lately — the Daily News‘ Bill Bender got the perfect quote from a witness to one of the many worrying building collapses, and “The whole jawn came down” will now live forever. We thought, then, that this was the perfect time to post this interview with linguist, lexicographer, Wall Street Journal columnist and former New York Times On Language columnist, UPenn Language Log-ger and all-around good sport Ben Zimmer, in which he sheds some light on the origins of “jawn,” plus “hoagie,” “chumpy” and other words from Philly’s regional lexicon. (Zimmer also has a new vocab-game app out — check it out!)
Read the rest here.