Word.ws English Dictionary

joan

/d͡ʒəʊn/US/d͡ʒoʊn/

joan is the alternative spelling of jone.

Meaning of jone

Verb

jone (third-person singular simple present jones, present participle joning, simple past and past participle joned)

  1. (intransitive, often, slang, transitive, African-American Vernacular) To good-naturedly make fun of (someone); to roast.
    • To survive in the hood, you need to know how to jone.

See all 2 meanings of jone

Proper noun capitalized: Joan

Joan (plural Joans)

  1. A female given name from French, a feminine form of John.
    • Maybe my mother didn't name me after Joan Crawford after all, I thought; she just told me that to cover up. She named me after Joan of Arc, didn't she know what happened to women like that?1979, Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle, page 336
    • In the Besson and Duguay films, the two Joans (Milla Jovovich and the 16-year-old Leelee Sobieski, respectively) brim with purpose, but one is ever mindful that here we have two fine-looking young women.1999 October 24, Peter M. Nichols, “Film: In a Joan of Arc Season, One Telling Is Timeless”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the...
  2. A male given name from Catalan, a form of John.

Noun capitalized: Joan

Joan (plural Joans)

  1. (archaic, colloquial, obsolete) A placeholder or conventional name for any woman, particularly a younger lower-class woman.
    • Ber. O and I forsoth in loue, I that haue been loues whip?...
      Well, I will loue, write, sigh, pray, shue, grone,
      Some men must loue my Ladie, and some Ione.1598, William Shakespeare, Loues Labors Lost, 1st Quarto, Act III, Scene i
    • Joan’s as good as this French lady.1606, Thomas Heywood, If You Knouu Not Me, You Know No Bodie
    Synonyms:
    Jill, Jane
  2. (archaic, obsolete) A kind of close-fitting cap for women popular in the mid-18th century.
    • A grocer's wife attractd our eyes by a new-fashioned cap called a Joan.1756, Connoisseur, number 134, page 810

Synonyms of joan

Forms of joan

Verb
third-person singular presentjoans
present participlejoaning
past participlejoaned
pastjoaned
Proper noun
pluralJoans
alternative formJo
alternative formIone
alternative formJone
alternative formIoane
alternative formJoane
Noun
pluralJoans

Origin of joan

A clipped or hypochoristic form of Joanna, from Latin Joanna, from Koine Greek Ἰωάννα (Iōánna), from Hebrew יוֹחָנָה (Yôḥānāh, literally “God is gracious”), the feminized form of יְהוֹחָנָן (Yəhōḥānān) which produced John and its many doublets. As a placeholder name, cf. similar use of John and Jack. Doublet of Ivana, Jana, Jane, Janice, Janis, Jean, Jeanne, Jen, Joanna, Joanne, Johanna, Juana, Shavonne, Sian, Siobhan, Shane, Shaun, Shauna, and Sheena.

Words formed from joan

Phrases with joan

Words that rhyme with joan

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about joan

What does joan mean?
Joan means a female given name from French, a feminine form of John.
What is joan the alternative spelling of?
Joan is the alternative spelling of jone.
What part of speech is joan?
Joan can be a proper noun or a noun.
How do you pronounce joan?
Joan is pronounced /d͡ʒoʊn/ (US).

Words near joan in the dictionary

  1. Joachimsthaler
  2. Joachimsthalers
  3. Joachite
  4. Joachites
  5. Joadja
  6. joan
  7. Joan Croft
  8. Joan of Arc
  9. Joan of Arcian
  10. Joan of Arcs
  11. Joan the wad

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: joan (page history and authors); Joan (page history and authors); jone (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Joan.wav.

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