Dictionary.com knows its role and smells what The Rock is cooking.
The website announced today that their biggest update ever, featuring more than 15,000 additions with 650 new words, includes one word that is very popular with pro wrestling fans – jabroni.
The official listing for “jabroni” reads like this:
jabroni – noun
Slang. a stupid, foolish, or contemptible person; loser: She always has a comeback to own the trolls and jabronis on Twitter. Shut your mouth, you dumb jabroni!
Also called en·hance·ment tal·ent, job·ber. Professional Wrestling. a wrestler whose purpose is to lose matches against headlining wrestlers in order to build up the status and fame of the headliners: The man is a legend in the ring—he eats jabronis for breakfast.
The word was popularized by The Rock during WWE’s Attitude Era, but in past media interviews he has credited WWE Hall of Famer The Iron Sheik with constantly using the word backstage.
“Yes, we put jabroni in the dictionary. We assume @TheRock could smell us cooking up this update the whole time,” Dictionary.com wrote on Twitter in response to feedback on the word being added to the dictionary.
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
This is not the first time that The Great One has helped get a WWE word into the dictionary. The word “SmackDown” was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary back in 2007.
The former WWE Champion spoke with Esquire Magazine in June 2015 and was asked about the word. He talked about how The Iron Sheik was known for using the “jabroni” term.
“When I was a kid, it was an inside term that guys would use,” Rock said. “When wrestlers wanted to have a private conversation when fans were present, they would start talking carny because they used to wrestle in carnivals. I thought it was so cool. Jabroni was a word that was always used in the derogatory sense. Oh, this jabroni, that jabroni.
“But the Iron Sheik was famous for saying the word constantly backstage. Jabroni, jabroni, jabroni. Around 1998, I thought, Why can’t I say it on TV? So I started saying it publicly, but the Iron Sheik was known for it.”
The Rock has not publicly commented on the new dictionary listing as of this writing.
