Entry · catalog no. 1043

joe

/ dʒoʊ /JOH

noun · midwest · 1990s

✓ Verified

A friend, a guy, or any person at all — used the way others say 'man' or 'homie,' and dropped into speech like punctuation.

“What's good, joe? I ain't seen you all week.”

Origin & Attribution

West Side of Chicago, a general term of address documented as core Chicago Black vernacular.

late 20th c.

West Side Chicago term of address

2010s

Spread through Chicago drill and rap

2016

Documented in The FADER

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

The Midwest

midwest · 1990s

Spoken by

Black Chicagoans

$JOEThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Rising

36 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

60/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1990

in the culture

Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.

Hear it spoken

By region — how it actually sounds

@chitown

Chicago, IL

@detlex

Detroit, MI

Contribute your pronunciation

Citations & Sources

■

The FADER — "This Is What Joe Means in Chicago" · 2016

submitted

■

Green's Dictionary of Slang — "joe"

submitted

+ Cite a source