Word.ws English Dictionary

poor-john

poor-john noun: a small European fish, of inferior quality to the cod.

Noun

poor-john (plural poor-johns)

  1. A small European fish, of inferior quality to the cod.
    • Poor-john and apple pies are all our fare.1653, John Harington, A Briefe View of the State of the Church
  2. Salted and dried hake.
    • What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or / alive? A fish: he smells like a fish: a very ancient and / fish-like smell; a kind of not of the newest Poor-John.1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
    • [I]f you ſcape vvith life, and take a fagot boat, and a bottle of Vſquebaugh, come home poore men, like a type of Theames Street ſtinking of pitch and poore Iohn.c. 1613–1616 (date written), Fra[ncis] Beaumont, Jo[hn] Fletcher, The Scornful Ladie. A Comedie. […], London: […] [John Beale] for Myles Partrich, […], published 1616, →OCLC, Act II, signature E...

Forms of poor-john

pluralpoor-johns

Questions about poor-john

What does poor-john mean?
Poor-john means a small European fish, of inferior quality to the cod.
What part of speech is poor-john?
Poor-john is a noun.
What is the plural of poor-john?
The plural of poor-john is poor-johns.

Words near poor-john in the dictionary

  1. Poor Toms
  2. poor white trash
  3. poor's box
  4. poor's boxes
  5. poor's roll
  6. poor-john
  7. poor-johns
  8. poor-mouth
  9. poor-mouthed
  10. poor-mouthing
  11. poor-mouths

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: poor-john (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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