jawboning
jawboning is the present participle and gerund of jawbone.
Meaning of jawbone
Verb
jawbone (third-person singular simple present jawbones, present participle jawboning, simple past and past participle jawboned)
- To talk persistently in an attempt to persuade somebody to cooperate.
- “We got a winner. He stole her glasses and she couldn't see. Boring.” (crowd jeering) “Give me my glasses back.” “I'm gonna give your glasses to your master.” “Lot of jawboning going on.” “Okay? Here you go. It was nice meeting you, okay?” “...a little less hot air, but I present to you our new...2022 July 26, William Meny & Paul Simms, “The Night Market” (16:56 from the start), in What We Do in the Shadows, season 4, episode 4, spoken by Ringmaster (Nick Corirossi)
- (especially of regulatory agencies) To try to persuade (someone) through implied threats of punitive action, such as tighter regulatory control.
Noun
jawboning (usually uncountable, plural jawbonings)
- Persistent persuasive talk, particularly (politics, economics) talk that includes implied threats of punitive action, such as tighter government regulation.
- Or the merely verbal pressure of jawbonings by prominent people may try to silence a certain point of view.1991, Terrence E. Cook, The Great Alternatives of Social Thought, page 194
- It's shocking to Douek, because she is a close-watcher of what's known as "jawboning," when regulators or government officials pressure private actors, like a social media company or broadcast network, to stifle speech. The libertarian Cato Institute calls the practice "censorship by proxy."[2025 September 18, Bobby Allyn, “Legal experts say pulling Jimmy Kimmel from air may amount to illegal 'jawboning'”, in Television, NPR, retrieved 18 Sep 2025
Forms of jawboning
| plural | jawbonings |
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Questions about jawboning
- What does jawboning mean?
- Jawboning means persistent persuasive talk, particularly (politics, economics) talk that includes implied threats of punitive action, such as tighter government regulation.
- What is jawboning the present participle and gerund of?
- Jawboning is the present participle and gerund of jawbone.
- What part of speech is jawboning?
- Jawboning is a noun.
- What is the plural of jawboning?
- The plural of jawboning is jawbonings.
Words near jawboning in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: jawboning (page history and authors); jawbone (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-jawboning.oga.
Cite this entry: “jawboning.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jawboning. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.