Wagwan

"What's going on?" / "What's up?" — one of the most common Patois-rooted greetings heard across the GTA.

Advertisement

How it's used

This is conversational glue — words and tags that hold a sentence together in everyday GTA speech.

“Wagwan, haven't seen you in mad long.”

Where it comes from

Origin: Jamaican Patois: "what's going on". It's one of many Toronto terms that trace back to Jamaican Patois, brought into the city through Toronto's Caribbean communities. Read the fuller story in our history of Toronto slang.

Sources

This entry was compiled through general research into Toronto/GTA slang rather than one single citable source — see the full bibliography in SOURCES.md and the wider context in our history of Toronto slang.

This word is a possible Torontle answer — the Wordle-style game built from this dictionary.

Play Torontle →

Related words

See it in the full dictionary → Read the history of Toronto slang →