Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • 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 Hebrew Tanakh.
  • proper noun nautical, slang A person who brings a ship bad luck.
  • 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").

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