John Bull en · PROPN
Etymology
Introduced by Dr. John Arbuthnot.
Meanings
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A personification of England.
How much longer are we English to assist foreign nations in misunderstanding us, by holding up that ridiculous lay-figure of our race known by the style and title of John Bull?
1862 December 27, Charles Dickens, “One Grand Tour Deserves Another”, in All the Year Round, page 378:
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(broadly) Something or someone that is stereotypically English.
In spite of these promptings to reflection, ignorance of his neighbours is the character of the typical John Bull. His is a domineering nature, steady in fight, imperious to command, but neither curious nor quick about the life of others.
1887, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Foreigner At Home”, in Memories and Portraits, New York: Charles Scribner, page 3:Next door to all that noble intention stood a bluff old John Bull of a hotel, Warners, now a pub and backpackers, and next to that, until 1993, a cinema, the last of several that had sprung up around the Square as temples of modernity.
2015, Fiona Farrell, The Villa at the Edge of the Empire, →ISBN, page 52:"In the coach in which I rode, there was a vacant seat till our arrival in Birmingham. Leaving Birmingham I found it filled with a fat Englishman, in drab breeches and gaiter boots, the finest specimen of a thorough John Bull that I had seen—weight about sixteen stone. He wore two top coats, a broad brimmed hat, and an enormous red travelling shawl, behind the folds of which his portly double chin was entirely hidden.
1958 October 14, “Liverpool to London in 1842”, in Railway Magazine, page 682:Thatched cottages, manors, old mills, venerable churches and wooded lanes personify a John Bull fancy, neatly tucked into gentle hill folds.
2005, David W. Moore, The Other British Isles, →ISBN, page 183:
Coordinates
Deriveds
Translations (7)
ru Джон Булл (personification of the UK government) · ja ジョン・ブル (personification of the UK government) · ko 존 불 (personification of the UK government) · ga Seán Buí (personification of the UK government) · cmn 約翰牛 /约翰牛 (personification of the UK government) · de John Bull (personification of the UK government) · ru Джон Булль (personification of the UK government)