Home » Segments » Who Struck John

Who Struck John

Lisa in Wilmington, North Carolina, remembers her grandmother using the expression who struck John to mean “confusion,” “foolishness,” or “bad behavior.” A common variant is “who shot John.” No one’s sure who John was, but this phrase is predated by a similar phrase, who struck Billy Patterson, a refrain from a 19th-century minstrel song. This is part of a complete episode.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

1 comment

More from this show

Stranger With a Strange Word: Grok

Debbie from Crawfordsville, Florida, says that when she and her husband reach an impasse while working on something, they’ll say Let’s grok about it, which they use to mean “Let’s think about it.” Grok was coined by...

Recent posts