The word “jawn” is unlike any other English word. In fact, according to the experts that I spoke to, it’s unlike any other word in any other language. It is an all-purpose noun, a stand-in for inanimate objects, abstract concepts, events, places, individual people, and groups of people…. It is a word without boundaries or limits.
Dan Nosowitz writes for Atlas Obscura on the history of jawn, a Philadelphia linguistic artifact like no other.
