Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to persuade someone into extending credit, to sell or buy on credit; note use as nickname in cit. 1906.

1906		C. M’Govern Sarjint Larry an’ Frinds 61: One fellow – ‘Jawbone’ Dan, so called because he always tries to do all his business on credit – has but a single spur.
1918		L.N. Smith Lingo of No Man’s Land 48: JAWBONE A new verb meaning to obtain credit, as, ‘I have jawboned Yank out of five dollars’.
1921		Sentinel 4 Feb. 16: I jaw-boned two packages of New Yorks and smoked them all.
1939		Army and Navy Register (US) 18 Nov. 3/2: ‘Jawbone,’ the equivalent of the civilian’s ‘put it on the cuff’.
1940		(con. 1918) S.J. Simonsen Soldier Bill 96: When the Americans bought anything from the French it was always for cash and when the French bought anything from the Americans, it was army ‘jawbone’.
1976		R. Dennis The One Dollar Rip-Off in Complete Hardman 1221: ‘You can’t jawbone me down. Fifty is my bottom figure’.

2. to talk, to chatter.

1972		E. Grogan Ringolevio 105: The guy [...] was going to [...] jawbone with his cronies.
1982		M. Braun Judas Tree (1983) 51: Wish I had more time to jawbone.
1994		N. McCall Makes Me Wanna Holler (1995) 182: He’d stop and jawbone with a group of guys hanging out near the canteen.

3. (US) to (attempt to) persuade, esp. in politics.

1969		Time 19 Sept. 32: Feather has been jawboning his union chiefs on the virtues of labor discipline on the shop floor.
2019		V.D. Hanson Case for Trump 82: Trump had reverted back to John F. Kennedy-style jawboning and hectoring of private corporations.