Word.ws English Dictionary

poor-johns

poor-johns is the plural of poor-john.

Meaning of poor-john

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...

Questions about poor-johns

What is poor-johns the plural of?
Poor-johns is the plural of poor-john.

Words near poor-johns in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: poor-johns (page history and authors); 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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