Emily Guendelsberger, “The Etymology of ‘Jawn’” (The Onion A.V. Club, Philadelphia edition, May 16, 2011)
Reading stories from Philly, our poor copy editors back at The A.V. Club’s Chicago mother ship have to deal with not only our constant profanity, but also our regional oddities—“cheesesteak” as one word instead of the usual two, references to the mysterious Wawa, and, most recently, one writer’s use of the even more mysterious “jawn.” We explained the word’s all-purpose “thing” definition as best as we could, but that got us wondering about how the word came to have this meaning in Philly, and only in Philly. We decided to call up linguist, lexicographer, and On Language columnist for The New York Times Ben Zimmer to ask him about “jawn,” “hoagie,” “down the Shore,” and other words in Philly’s regional lexicon.
Read the rest here.