ClumsyMonkey.net

Preoccupied of late with war words, I have not kept up with the jonesing.

''Jonesing for Joni'' was listed in Entertainment Weekly, describing a PBS documentary on the folk singer Joni Mitchell.

''For those of you who have been jonesing for an interactive theater fix'' was the lead of a recent film review by Michael Gallucci in The Cleveland Scene.

''Love Is the Drug, and I'm Jonesing for a Hit'' was the headline in The New York Observer over an article last month by Susan Shapiro kvetching about her husband's lack of sexual aggressiveness.

This is obviously a participle in play, presumably the latest, hot, with-it usage. On digging into the Times archives, however, I found this Oct. 19, 1970, citation in a profile of Alva V. John, a Harlem broadcaster: ''That food may not be the most delicious in the world, but it's not nearly so dangerous as these jones you've been having.'' The reporter, now Charlayne Hunter-Gault of PBS, explained in parenthesis: ''A jones is a craving brought on by drug usage.''

The root is a proper noun: for a reason I cannot fathom, Jones -- a family name held in my estimation by nearly 18 million Americans -- was applied in the early 1960's to heroin addiction. J.E. Lighter's Historical Dictionary of American Slang speculates about another possible origin: the male sex organ. In the 1970's, the noun -- no longer capitalized -- most often referred to withdrawal symptoms, and made the transition to verb: jonesing out. In 1984, I noted that jonesin' was extended to mean ''doin' nothin','' as addicts often do, but it was not until this millennium that the participle made the leap into popular speech as a generalized ''craving.''

''When I was little,'' says my colleague Maureen Dowd (meaning when she was growing up in Washington), ''we used to say jone-ing, which meant 'picking on.' When you were jone-ing on someone, you were mocking them.'' This local usage was overwhelmed by the national underground popularity of jonesing, in its postnarcotics sense of ''lusting for.''

On Gawker Stalker, a Web site that observes, and leers and snickers at, personalities in the news, a notably slim fashion editor was spotted ''zeta-jonesing on a McVeggie at the gaudy, fou-fou McDonald's on 42nd btw 8th & b'way.''

Thus does the language come full circle. The allusion is to the actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, cattily scolded for adding a few pounds since her Oscar-winning performance in ''Chicago.'' Cruelly but creatively, the blogger applies her hyphenated last name to the lusting after a tasty burger by the hungry editor. To take the meaning of this nonce variation from the context, zeta-jonesing is ''indulging in a craving for (meatless) food.'' This specialized usage returns jonesing to its original state of a proper noun in participle form.

In current slang use, jonesing has evolved from its narcotics-addiction base to a general lusting, craving or yearning. It seems to have shouldered aside to have the hots for.

thirdhour wrote:me thinks ive gotta a jonesin' for sum luvin'

thirdhour wrote:i havent had one in a really long time i was going to collect a whole bunch of the bottles and put them all over my room. but i was too lazy, so i ended up with a grand total of....two meh