Meaning of Joan | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A female given name from French, a feminine form of John.
2. A placeholder or conventional name for any woman, particularly a younger lower-class woman.
   archaic, colloquial, obsolete
3. A kind of close-fitting cap for women popular in the mid-18th century.
   archaic, obsolete

Equivalents

Examples

“Maybe my mother didn't name me after Joan Crawford after all, I thought; she just told me that to cover up. She named me after Joan of Arc, didn't she know what happened to women like that?”

“Joan Goldstein, the Jewish chair of the group’s chapter in North Jersey, has attended Ramadan celebrations throughout the years — although she said she hasn’t been able to do the full fast yet and still drinks water.”

“Ber. O and I forsoth in loue, I that haue been loues whip?... Well, I will loue, write, sigh, pray, shue, grone, Some men must loue my Ladie, and some Ione.”

“Joan’s as good as this French lady.”

“‘Ioan in the darke is as good as my lady:’ Nay, perhapps better, such ladies there may bee.”

“Bast. A foot of Honor better then I was, But many a many foot of Land the worse. Well, now can I make any Ioane a Lady, Good den Sir Richard, Godamercy fellow, And if his name be George, Ile call him Peter; For new made honor doth forget mens names...”

“...when Henslowe notes Heywood's next play he has a little more respect for him; for, although the total was again but five pounds, three pounds on February 10, 1598/9 and the rest two days later, the dramatist on both occasions is Mr. Heywood. The only surviving fragment of the piece, ‘Jonne as good as my ladey’, may be a song in Γυναικεῖον with the burden 'What care I how faire she bee...”

“A wife. But what wife and when? Pretty, yes, but godly and modest. He remembers something Taffy said once: ‘A homely Joan is as good as a lady when the lights are out.’ Aye, Taf, he thinks, but best to marry one whose face you can worship. An image of Lucy Tompkins pops unbidden into his mind.”

“A grocer's wife attractd our eyes by a new-fashioned cap called a Joan.”

CEFR level