Jevi
Great, excellent, impressive — English "heavy", posted home from New York and naturalised.
Related lesson: Dominican Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
Ese merengue tá jevi, súbelo.
That merengue is brilliant — turn it up.
Qué jevi tu carro nuevo, manín.
Your new car is fantastic, mate.
La pasamos jevi anoche en el colmadón.
We had a brilliant time at the colmadón last night.
What It Actually Means
Jevi means good, great, impressive — the Dominican equivalent of chévere, bacano or brutal elsewhere in the Caribbean. It describes music, cars, nights out, trainers and, occasionally, people, in which case it means someone is likeable and worth having around rather than physically striking. It is an adjective of approval and nothing more complicated than that, which is exactly why it stuck.
Where It Comes From
Straight from English heavy, in its 1970s sense of intense, impressive, serious — sent home by the Dominican community in New York along with yipeta (from Jeep, meaning any SUV) and chopear (from to shop). The spelling is doing honest work: Spanish has no h sound, so English h arrives as j. Spain borrowed the same English word independently, which is why jevi turns up in Madrid too — with a different meaning, see below.
How Natives Use It
Informally and invariably: no gender, no number, so una fiesta jevi and unos tenis jevi both stand. It pairs with estar far more than ser, because it is a verdict on how something is going rather than what it permanently is. The register is youthful and urban but not new — it has been current since the 1980s, which by the standards of Dominican slang makes it comfortably middle-aged and safe to use.
Common Pitfall
Two collisions. In Spain, un jevi is a heavy-metal fan, so the compliment lands as a description of someone’s leather jacket. And on the island itself, do not confuse it with jevo / jeva — boyfriend and girlfriend — which sounds close and means something entirely different: mi jeva tá jevi is a grammatical sentence and not a stutter.