This week’s theme
Words derived after names

This week’s words
John Henry
mollycoddle
Jones
patsy
jasper

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(jonz)

MEANING:

noun: 1 One’s neighbors or social equals. Typically used in the phrase: keeping up with the Joneses.
noun: 2. An addiction or craving, especially for drugs.
verb intr.: To have an intense longing.

ETYMOLOGY:

For noun 1: From Jones, a common surname. The phrase was popularized by the comic strip Keeping up with the Joneses that ran in newspapers from 1913 to 1938. Earliest documented use: 1879.
For noun 2, verb: Of uncertain origin. Earliest documented use: 1965.

USAGE:

“Dunton had kept his private life completely separate from his profession and avoided any nonsense of competing with Joneses.”
Geoffrey Household; The Courtesy of Death; Brown; 1967.

“And aren’t we all always jonesing for a way out
or in, a better deal, a shorter distance to x, more
y.”
Ellen Doré Watson; In Which We Are What We Repeatedly Do; Ploughshares (Cambridge, Massachusetts); Spring 2022.

See more usage examples of Jones in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: