Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Heroin.
  • noun An addiction or craving.
  • intransitive verb To have an eager or intense desire.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun US, slang Heroin.
  • noun US, slang An addiction or intense craving.
  • verb US, slang Have an intense craving.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Perhaps from the name Jones.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Ed Boland, in The New York Times, March 2002, attributes the term to heroin addicts who frequented Great Jones Alley in New York City, off Great Jones Street between Broadway and Lafayette Street, although the slang term has obviously been around much longer.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Traveling-to-a-place energy and living-in-a-place energy are two fundamentally different energies, and something about meeting this Australian girl on her way to Slovenia just gave me such a jones to hit the road.

    --Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia, p. 78

    August 10, 2009