John Bullとは 意味・読み方・使い方

固有名詞

John Bull

1. A personification of England.

   Coordinate terms: Johnny Canuck, Uncle Sam

   • 1862 December 27, Charles Dickens, “One Grand Tour Deserves Another”, in All the Year Round, page 378:

     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?

2. (by extension) Something or someone that is stereotypically English.
   • 1887, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Foreigner At Home”, in Memories and Portraits, New York: Charles Scribner, page 3:

     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.

   • 1958 October, “Liverpool to London in 1842”, in Railway Magazine, page 682:

     "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.

   • 2005, David W. Moore, The Other British Isles, →ISBN, page 183:

     Thatched cottages, manors, old mills, venerable churches and wooded lanes personify a John Bull fancy, neatly tucked into gentle hill folds.

   • 2015, Fiona Farrell, The Villa at the Edge of the Empire, →ISBN, page 52:

     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.