Word.ws English Dictionary

Dunkirk spirit

Dunkirk spirit noun: the spirit of the British public pulling together to overcome times of adversity.

dunkirk spirit: the spirit of the British public pulling together to overcome times of adversity
Image: Frank Capra (film), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

Dunkirk spirit (uncountable)

  1. (UK, idiomatic) The spirit of the British public pulling together to overcome times of adversity.

Origin of Dunkirk spirit

The phrase came into use following the evacuation of allied troops across the English Channel by flotillas of pleasure boats, working barges and other civilian craft at the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940.

Questions about Dunkirk spirit

What does Dunkirk spirit mean?
Dunkirk spirit means the spirit of the British public pulling together to overcome times of adversity.
What part of speech is Dunkirk spirit?
Dunkirk spirit is a noun.

Words near Dunkirk spirit in the dictionary

  1. dunking on
  2. dunking out
  3. dunkings
  4. Dunkins
  5. Dunkirk
  6. Dunkirk spirit
  7. Dunkirker
  8. Dunkirkers
  9. Dunkl operator
  10. Dunkl operators
  11. Dunkle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Dunkirk spirit (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-Dunkirk spirit.ogg.

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