browning n.— «Some students once met a radio personality and marvelled that she was a “browning.” This host speaks the real Jamaican patois and they thought she would be “jet black.” Why? Because brownings don’t...
nanny n.— «I remember the first time I saw a Jamaican $100 bill. It was at home in St. Thomas and an “uncle’ was visiting from the United States.…I do not know when the $100 became a “bills,” as it is commonly...
bills n.— «I remember the first time I saw a Jamaican $100 bill. It was at home in St. Thomas and an “uncle’ was visiting from the United States.…I do not know when the $100 became a “bills,” as it is commonly...
turn someone over v. phr.— «Too public, it seems. The Mail on Sunday, in Fleet Street parlance, turned him over. Treating him like an errant soap star over two pages, it sunk its fangs into the English divorcee, highlighting his glamorous...
browning n.— «The assumptions are that beauty is not obviously black; although, in the context of Jamaica, and perhaps the rest of the English-speaking Caribbean, it is not overtly Caucasian and aquiline. Something in between translates...
wash-belly n.— «Hyacinth “Iya” Archibald’s world was uplifted, when on September 25, 1978, her last child (in Jamaican patois called “wash-belly”) Ricardo “Bibi” Gardner was born.» —“Boy wonder...