Word.ws English Dictionary

Poor John

Poor John is the alternative form 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...

Forms of Poor John

pluralPoor Johns

Questions about Poor John

What is Poor John the alternative form of?
Poor John is the alternative form of poor-john.

Words near Poor John in the dictionary

  1. poor form
  2. poor house
  3. poor houses
  4. poor is a mindset
  5. poor is a state of mind
  6. Poor John
  7. Poor Johns
  8. poor knights of Windsor
  9. Poor Ladies
  10. Poor Lady
  11. poor law

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Poor John (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Poor John.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/poor_john. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.