Word.ws English Dictionary

John Barleycorn

John Barleycorn proper noun: a personification of alcoholic drink made from barley, particularly beer and whisky.

Proper noun

John Barleycorn

  1. A personification of alcoholic drink made from barley, particularly beer and whisky.
    • Blazing face: redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for a red nose.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 6: Hades]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part II [Odyssey], page 92

Origin of John Barleycorn

John (commonly used to personify a concept) + barleycorn; barley is used to produce malt, the source of most British alcoholic drink.

Questions about John Barleycorn

What does John Barleycorn mean?
John Barleycorn means a personification of alcoholic drink made from barley, particularly beer and whisky.
What part of speech is John Barleycorn?
John Barleycorn is a proper noun.

Words near John Barleycorn in the dictionary

  1. John 50
  2. John 50s
  3. John A. Grindle
  4. John Asscroft
  5. John Audley
  6. John Barleycorn
  7. John Bircher
  8. John Blunt
  9. John Bull
  10. John Bullish
  11. John Bullism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: John Barleycorn (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: “John Barleycorn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/john_barleycorn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.