John Bull

English[edit]

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?
(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.
- 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.

personification of the UK government