Jawn is the undisputed champion of Philadelphia slang. It basically means thing, which means it can mean any thing. And people, local businesses and even corporations have liberally used jawn throughout the city.

Billy Penn has tracked down 18 of these jawns in the wild, from Vitamin water ads to eyeglasses to the famous crispy fish jawns of South Philly.

Advertisement jawns

Jawn vitamin
Credit: Mark Dent

Graffiti jawn (7th and Snyder)

Tattoo jawn

Fashion jawns

https://instagram.com/p/8dvEMhMOjs/
Jawn glasses
Philly Eyeworks

T-shirt jawns

Screen Shot 2015-10-08 at 9.37.22 AM
jawn tasty
Screen Shot 2015-10-08 at 9.40.11 AM

“Jaws” jawn, phone case version

Screen Shot 2015-10-08 at 4.56.47 PM

Local music jawn

New #Ep by @DaSkrillaBoi http://t.co/26KfKfBvDD pic.twitter.com/5nAghJTaoL

— $krilla (@DaSkrillaBoi) September 23, 2015

Jawn fail

NOOOOOO! damnit. That jawn would have been worth 111 points!!!! #philly #jawn pic.twitter.com/YISK7KRMqo

— Brendan McNulty (@VoiceofBrendan) September 13, 2015

Intelligent jawn

Screen Shot 2015-10-08 at 5.06.08 PM

Food jawns

Blue Jawn Burger (The Blue Duck)

The JAWN (Spotburger)

https://twitter.com/TyreliusTrey/status/626486850446852096

Crispy fish jawns (Ippolito’s)

ippolitos-credit-danyahenninger-fishjawns3-1000×703
Credit: Danya Henninger

Beer jawn

https://twitter.com/neo_postmodern/status/647059432879300608

And the holy jawn

https://twitter.com/jblumgart/status/647807414075461632

Mark Dent is a reporter/curator at BillyPenn. He previously worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he covered the Jerry Sandusky scandal, Penn State football and the Penn State administration. His...