Word.ws English Dictionary

jenkem

jenkem noun: a purported hallucinogenic inhalant made from fermented sewage.

Noun

jenkem (uncountable)

  1. A purported hallucinogenic inhalant made from fermented sewage.
    • When they cannot afford glue or are too scared to steal petrol, these youngsters turn to Jenkem as a way of getting high.1999 July 30, Ishbel Matheson, “Children high on sewage”, in BBC News
    • The hotel garden shrieked with bird life, and there were crocodiles in the courtyard pond; the fountains on either end of Cairo Road blustered with fresh water, and the street children were mad-eyed (those who can afford it sniff glue or gasoline, and those who can't sniff jenkem, fermented human...2005 September, Alexandra Fuller, “We Just Want Enough”, in National Geographic, →ISSN

Forms of jenkem

alternative formjekem

Origin of jenkem

From Genkem (itself from General Chemical), a brand of glue similarly sniffed as a drug in South Africa.

Questions about jenkem

What does jenkem mean?
Jenkem means a purported hallucinogenic inhalant made from fermented sewage.
What part of speech is jenkem?
Jenkem is a noun.

Words near jenkem in the dictionary

  1. Jenipher
  2. jeniquen
  3. Jenison
  4. Jenisons
  5. jenite
  6. jenkem
  7. jenkin
  8. jenkins
  9. Jenkins County
  10. Jenkinses
  11. Jenkinsian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jenkem (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.

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Cite this entry: “jenkem.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jenkem. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.