Entry · catalog no. 1043

joe

/ /

noun · midwest ·

✓ 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.

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

Nationwide / diaspora

midwest ·

Spoken by

$JOEThe Record · cultural traction

▲

26 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

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

@auntiereg

Atlanta, GA

@deltasoul

Memphis, TN

Contribute your pronunciation

Citations & Sources

■

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

submitted

■

Green's Dictionary of Slang — "joe"

submitted