noun A person on shipboard regarded as the cause of ill luck; any one whose presence is supposed or alleged to cause misfortune.
To play the part of a Jonah to; spoil the luck of; bring ill luck to.
noun In games of chance, a player who can never win anything; a very unlucky person.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
noun The Hebrew prophet, who was cast overboard as one who endangered the ship; hence, any person whose presence is unpropitious.
noun (Zoöl.) a large crab (Cancer borealis) of the eastern coast of the United States, sometimes found between tides, but usually in deep water.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
proper noun A male given name.
proper noun biblical A book of the Old Testament and the HebrewTanakh.
proper noun nautical, slang A person who brings a ship badluck.
proper noun slang, by extension of the nautical sense Any person or object which is deemed to cause bad luck; a jinx.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
noun (Old Testament) Jonah did not wish to become a prophet so God caused a great storm to throw him overboard from a ship; he was saved by being swallowed by a whale that vomited him out onto dry land
noun a book in the Old Testament that tells the story of Jonah and the whale
noun a person believed to bring bad luck to those around him
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Hebrew יונה ("dove").
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word Jonah.
Examples
For the story of Jonah (who was commanded, however, not to go to Tarshish) see _Jonah_ i.
 Before exiting town, Jonah is offered a bounty (by a man dressed in the classic garb of the Lone Ranger, a funny little bit of business) on various remaining vaqueros.
Jonah is a talent but should really think twice about losing some weight or he is going to be another John Candy or John Belushi. blog comments powered by Disqus
In his book mentioned previously, J.S.M. Ward tells of a Roman sarcophagus in the Bardo Museum, Tunis, showing the emergence of Jonah from the whale that swallowed him for three days, and making the Sign of Preservation – in effect, indicating that his life was saved.
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.