Joe Miller

English

Etymology

After Joe Miller (actor) (1684–1738), the namesake of the 18th-century joke book Joe Miller's Jests.

Noun

Joe Miller (plural Joe Millers) (colloquial, dated)

1. A stale jest; a worn-out joke.

   Synonyms: Joe, Joe Millerism

   • 1874, William Pole, The Theory of the Modern Scientific Game of Whist:

     It is an old Joe Miller in whist circles, that there are only two reasons that can justify you in not returning trumps to your partner's lead; i.e., first, sudden illness; secondly, having none.

   • 1885–1888, Richard F[rancis] Burton, transl. and editor, A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, now Entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night […], Shammar edition, volume (please specify the volume), [London]: […] Burton Club […], →OCLC:

     There is a venerable Joe Miller about a schoolmaster who, wishing to singe his long beard short, burnt it off and his face to boot:--which reminded him of the saying.

     The quote appears in the author's footnotes

2. The point of something; the fun or utility in doing a thing.
   • 1867, George Manville Fenn, Original penny readings, page 59:

     "Don't begin them boots till I gives yer the order," says Jinks, as he goes out.
     "No," I says, "I shan't;" nor I didn't neither, for I couldn't see the Joe Miller of it, and somehow or another Jinks never come inside my place again.

   • 2003, Joe Coyle, Athletics in Drogheda 1861-2001, page 33:

     Had the committee been composed of teetotalers, and the sports run on strict Oliver Plunkett lines, one could understand the Joe Miller of it all; but when the meeting was otherwise conducted and received the patronage of brewers and publicans — well, it was hard lines to say the least that Tommy Atkins should have been permitted to return to his quarters in Dundalk musing over what a temperance or inhospitable set must be the Drogheda wheelers.

References

• John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary