Paon

An onomatopoeia from "paon," the Japanese rendering of an elephant's trumpeting call. It rarely stands on its own: by far the most common form is "pien koete paon" ("past pien, all the way to paon"). Where "pien" is on-the-verge-of-tears, "paon" is the dial turned one click past it — crying out loud. It spread around 2020 as a spin-off of the 2019 "pien" boom, moving from JK (joshi-kousei, high school girl) and gyaru circles onto social media. There is no deep meaning in "paon" itself; it caught on mostly because it sounds good as the next beat after "pien." From there people kept escalating it for laughs, producing absurd extensions like "Pien-ga-oka Dosukoi-no-suke." It shows up in sad moments, but the point is comic exaggeration rather than genuine devastation. As of 2026 it feels dated alongside "pien" — using it now reads as deliberate irony or nostalgia.