Jonesing

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Mandy Stringer calling from Tallahassee, Florida.

Hey, Mandy, welcome.

Hi, what’s up? What can we do for you?

My question for you all is that over the Thanksgiving break, my husband and I and our kids met my parents in London for a week.

And so as you’re wont to do, you know, when in London, we had a little ritual every night of going to a pub.

And so one day, a few days into the trip, I said, I looked at my watch and it was about 5 o’clock and I said, hey, it’s five, I’m jonesing for a pint, let’s go to the pub.

And my mother said, jonesing, what does that mean?

And my father then looks at me and says, I don’t think you should say that in polite company.

And I said, what are you talking about?

And he said, he then explains to my mother what he thinks it means, which I cannot repeat on air.

And so I said, that is not at all what it means.

It means that you’re craving something.

And then we had a little discussion about it, and then I vowed to get in touch with you two when I got back to the States and ask you about the origin of that word.

Mandy, was he thinking it was something like a sexual arousal?

Indeed, he was.

For a man?

Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Oh, boy.

That’s an interesting.

So where does Jonesing come from?

That’s your question.

That is my question.

All right.

And in fact, I think you can’t say it with the proper I-N-G.

It has to be Jonesing.

Jonesing.

Jonesing.

All right.

I find it all over the place.

I will tell you one thing.

I don’t think your father is right.

I don’t know where he picked that up from.

It means a craving.

And the craving originally in the 1960s had to do with a craving for heroin or other very addictive drugs.

So as early as 1962, we find a Jones being used as a noun.

And then very shortly after, we find to Jones or to be Jonesing, the verb form of it.

And then not long after that, not only does it mean a craving or an addiction or really needing it, it refers to the process of withdrawal.

It refers to suffering the symptoms of not having that drug around you anymore, not having the thing that feeds your addiction.

And then as happens to a lot of slang, underwent semantic bleaching, as it’s called, where the kind of negative aspects faded away.

And now you can say, oh, I have a jonesing for a hamburger.

So it’s not anything illicit or anything that’s truly dangerous for you, at least unless you have hamburgers every day.

Anyway, so the origin, though, is what you want to know.

And unfortunately, it’s mostly origin unknown, but I’m going to share the two predominant theories with you for what they’re worth.

Okay.

One of them, which I kind of like, has to do with the phrase keeping up with the Joneses.

So this phrase has been around, oh, for decades before you could Jones for heroin or have a Jones for heroin.

And that means to try to keep up with the neighbors when they get something nice and like a new car or an above-ground swimming pool.

You get a new car and you get an above-ground swimming pool.

And the idea is if you’re keeping up with the Jones, you’re keeping up with this thing inside of you that demands attention and demands this particular kind of satisfaction.

And I could see that.

Unfortunately, drug slaying doesn’t ever really carry with it the history of its origins.

It doesn’t travel alongside its origin story.

So we’re only guessing at this point.

The other theory, which I like a lot less, is that it has to do with Great Jones Street or Great Jones Alley in New York City, where supposedly drug addicts would hang out either to buy their drugs or to shoot up.

The problem with this theory is nobody can find anything in the printed record that shows that Great Jones Street or the alley ever was a haven for drug users.

All right. Very interesting.

Anyway, your dad, God bless him, was not really spot on on the meaning.

You have the meaning down, Pat.

Well, good.

And little does he know what I will say in polite company.

So it’s better if he doesn’t know.

All right.

Mandy, you’re a delight.

Call us again sometime, all right?

Thank you so much.

You guys have a great day.

Okay.

Thanks, Mandy.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

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