Word.ws English Dictionary

Joan's as good as my lady in the dark

Joan's as good as my lady in the dark proverb: synonym of all cats are grey in the dark: Sex is enjoyable regardless of the status, physical attractiveness, or social status of one's partner.

Proverb

Joan's as good as my lady in the dark

  1. (archaic, potentially vulgar and offensive) Synonym of all cats are grey in the dark: Sex is enjoyable regardless of the status, physical attractiveness, or social status of one's partner.
    • ‘Ioan in the darke is as good as my lady:’
      Nay, perhapps better, such ladies there may bee.1611, John Davies, "Vpon Englishe Prouerbs", Scourge of Folly, §386
    • Here is as good bread made as in France; and in the night Joan is as good as my lady; and unhappy is that man that is to break his fast at two of the clock in the afternoon and there’s no heart a handful bigger than another; and the stomach is filled with the coarsest victuals; and the little fowls...1620, [Miguel de Cervantes], chapter XXXIII, in Thomas Shelton, transl., The Second Part of the History of the Valorous and Witty Knight-errant, Don Quixote of the Mancha. […], London: […] [Eliot’s...

Synonyms of Joan's as good as my lady in the dark

Origin of Joan's as good as my lady in the dark

From or alongside the use of Joan as a sexually available member of the lower classes found in related expressions such as He is our Ladies Chaplaine, but serves Ione and Joan's as good as this French lady. Ultimately a calque of Latin and Ancient Greek expressions such as πᾶσα γυνὲ τοῦ λύχνου ἀρθέντος ἡ αὐτή ἐστι (pâsa gunè toû lúkhnou arthéntos hē autḗ esti) and sublata enim lucerna quaevis mulier cuiusvis est similis (“all women are the same when the lamp is removed”), which Plutarch considered only accurate as an excuse to escape lecherous and adulterous men but which Erasmus considered a description of how all women would indulge themselves so long as witnesses and punishment could be avoided.

Questions about Joan's as good as my lady in the dark

What does Joan's as good as my lady in the dark mean?
Joan's as good as my lady in the dark means synonym of all cats are grey in the dark: Sex is enjoyable regardless of the status, physical attractiveness, or social status of one's partner.
What part of speech is Joan's as good as my lady in the dark?
Joan's as good as my lady in the dark is a proverb.

Words near Joan's as good as my lady in the dark in the dictionary

  1. Joan Croft
  2. Joan of Arc
  3. Joan of Arcian
  4. Joan of Arcs
  5. Joan the wad
  6. Joan's as good as my lady in the dark
  7. Joane
  8. joaned
  9. Joanetta
  10. Joanette
  11. joanie

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Joan's as good as my lady in the dark (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Joan's as good as my lady in the dark.wav.

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