Word.ws English Dictionary

no johns

no johns phrase: do not make excuses (for losing a match).

Phrase

no johns

  1. (slang) Do not make excuses (for losing a match).
    • “No Johns” is such a ubiquitous phrase in the Smash scene that it’s even inspired regional variations around the world. No Stacos. No Tiesos. No Joshis. Igna Yunas, in Swedish. It even made it into Smash itself: One of the “random” names that players can assign themselves in the Wii U and Switch...2019 September 16, Cecilia D'Anastasio, “How A High School Smash Bros. Joke Became A World-Famous Saying”, in Kotaku

Forms of no johns

alternative formno Johns

Origin of no johns

Coined by Super Smash Bros. player Jesse "Zulu" Fuentes in 1999 in reference to his friend John, who would allegedly often make unconvincing excuses for losing a match.

Questions about no johns

What does no johns mean?
No johns means do not make excuses (for losing a match).
What part of speech is no johns?
No johns is a phrase.

Words near no johns in the dictionary

  1. no human involved
  2. no hymen, no diamond
  3. no idea
  4. no jab, no play
  5. no Jews, no news
  6. no johns
  7. no joke
  8. no joy
  9. no justice, no peace
  10. no kick
  11. no kidding

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: no johns (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-no johns.wav.

Cite this entry: “no johns.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/no_johns. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.