Word.ws English Dictionary

butcher's apron

butcher's apron noun: the Union Jack, as a symbol of oppressive British nationalism.

Noun (1)

butcher's apron (plural butcher's aprons)

  1. (Ireland, derogatory) The Union Jack, as a symbol of oppressive British nationalism.
    • Mr Eamonn McCann, of the Derry Labour Party, said he had no objection to people waving the Union Jack in the Diamond; he had no liking for it, as he considered it as being a butcher's apron in places like Aden and Kenya and elsewhere.1969 March 31, Fergus Pyle, “Marchers attain Derry aim”, in The Irish Times, page 8
    • They went out to the car and drove for over an hour until the road came into Cookstown. ... On the front of one of the stores, an insurance agency, there was a British flag flying. Sean pointed to it.
      “What do they have the butcher’s apron out for?” he said.1973, Jimmy Breslin, World Without End, Amen, New York: Viking, →ISBN, page 284

Noun (2) capitalized: Butcher's Apron

Butcher's Apron (plural Butcher's Aprons)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of butcher's apron.

Forms of butcher's apron

pluralbutcher's aprons
alternative formButcher's Apron
pluralButcher's Aprons

Origin of butcher's apron

The apron worn in a traditional butcher's shop often has blue and white stripes and may acquire red bloodstains in the course of the work, thus bearing a passing resemblance to the red, white, and blue design of the Union Jack. Metaphorically, the pejorative allusion is to the bloodshed blamed on British imperialism.

Questions about butcher's apron

What does butcher's apron mean?
Butcher's apron means the Union Jack, as a symbol of oppressive British nationalism.
What part of speech is butcher's apron?
Butcher's apron is a noun.
What is the plural of butcher's apron?
The plural of butcher's apron is butcher's aprons.

Words near butcher's apron in the dictionary

  1. butcher papers
  2. butcher shop
  3. butcher shops
  4. butcher stripes
  5. butcher's
  6. butcher's apron
  7. butcher's aprons
  8. butcher's bill
  9. butcher's block
  10. butcher's blocks
  11. butcher's broom

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: butcher's apron (page history and authors); Butcher's Apron (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “butcher's apron.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/butcher%27s_apron. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.