The pro wrestling term “jabroni,” made famous on television by WWE legends Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and The Iron Sheik, is now officially a part of the dictionary. For its September update, Dictionary.com added entries for 650 new words, and the unusual insult has finally made the cut. “Yes, we put jabroni in the dictionary,” the company said of the term in a message posted to Twitter. “We assume [The Rock] could smell us cooking up this update the whole time.”
Yes, we put jabroni in the dictionary. We assume @TheRock could smell us cooking up this update the whole time. https://t.co/kNdHhsLYrn
— Dictionary.com (@Dictionarycom) September 1, 2020
Officially, there are two definitions for jabroni in the dictionary, both of which are nouns. The first definition, described as a slang term, is a “stupid, foolish, or contemptible person; loser.” A second meaning of the word, specifically as a pro wrestling term, serves as another name for a “jobber” or “enhancement talent.” That is, a “wrestler whose purpose is to lose matches against headlining wrestlers in order to build up the status and fame of the headliners.”
Longtime wrestling fans will remember when Johnson consistently used the word while at the peak of his fame wrestling in WWE as The Rock. In addition to uttering classic catch phrases like, “Know your role, and shut your mouth,” Johnson would also often refer to his opponents at “jabronis.” It came to be a word that some of The Rock’s greatest opponents, from “Stone Cold” Steve Austin to Triple H, began to know all too well. Still, while Johnson further popularized the term by using it very often in the late ’90s, The Rock has credited The Iron Sheik for first using the word.
“His impact on my career has really been profound,” The Rock said of The Iron Sheik in a documentary about the Iranian grappler. “Now the word jabroni is connected to me. When a lot of people think, ‘Oh, jabroni, oh, yeah, yeah, it’s The Rock’s word.’ No, no, no, no. It’s not my word. It’s The Iron Sheik’s word.”
While Johnson isn’t using the word “jabroni” much these days, The Iron Sheik still has a tendency to use it frequently on social media in many expletive-laden rants that sometimes go viral. The former pro wrestler is known for going on angry verbal tirades against people he doesn’t seem to like, often referring to them as a “jabroni” among other much more colorful terms. On Twitter, The Iron Sheik has also posted his response to the word getting its place in the dictionary, hoping to get the word trending by saying: “I AM THE LEGEND. RT LETS MAKE THE WORD JABRONI THE TRENDING BUBBA.”
I AM THE LEGEND. RT LETS MAKE THE WORD JABRONI THE TRENDING BUBBA
— The Iron Sheik (@the_ironsheik) September 1, 2020
Also included in Dictionary.com’s new entries for 2020 are new dictionary entries for ecoanxiety, emotional support animal, MeToo, and af. Other updates include changes to various other topics, such as race, gender, and sexuality, to better reflect “the ways language is constantly evolving.” This includes capitalizing the word Black in reference to people and replacing references to “homosexuality” with “gay sexual orientation.” You can see more of the new dictionary updates for this year at Dictionary.com. Some details of this story comes to us from ESPN.
