English Online Dictionary. What means jones? What does jones mean?
English
Pronunciation
- (US) IPA(key): /d͡ʒoʊnz/
- Rhymes: -oʊnz
- Homophone: Jones (US)
Etymology 1
Ed Boland, in The New York Times, March 2002, attributes the term to heroin addicts who frequented Great Jones Alley in New York City, off Great Jones Street between Broadway and Lafayette Street, although the slang term has obviously been around much longer.
Dan Waldorf states that the use of the term, in the sense of “addiction”, originated among heroin addicts.
Noun
jones (plural joneses)
- (US, slang, now rare) Heroin.
- 1965, Amiri Baraka, The Alternative, as cited in Peter Bruck (ed.), The Black American Short Story in the 20th Century, John Benjamins, p. 196
- You mean you got a little Jones, huh? Was it good?
- 1965, Amiri Baraka, The Alternative, as cited in Peter Bruck (ed.), The Black American Short Story in the 20th Century, John Benjamins, p. 196
- (US, slang) An addiction or intense craving.
- I’ve got a basketball jones!
- 1992, Anonymous as cited in Dan Waldorf, Cocaine Changes, Temple University Press, p. 126
- And I went through a kind of withdrawal jones thing and drank a bunch and then took a Valium, and it comes in waves.
Derived terms
Translations
Verb
jones (third-person singular simple present joneses, present participle jonesing, simple past and past participle jonesed)
- (US, slang) Have an intense craving.
- (US, slang) To binge on cocaine and/or alcohol.
Translations
Etymology 2
See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.
Verb
jones
- third-person singular simple present indicative of jone
References
Anagrams
- Jeons