Jonah in Sailors' Superstition
A long-established expression among sailors uses the term "a Jonah" as meaning a person (either a sailor or a passenger) whose presence on board brings bad luck and endangers the ship. Later on, this meaning was extended to "a Jonah" referring to "a person who carries a jinx, one who will bring bad luck to any enterprise." An example of a so-called "Jonah" would be that of the sailor in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, who was cursed to be lost at sea after he killed an albatross.
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Famous quotes containing the words jonah and/or superstition:
“Why need Christians be still intolerant and superstitious? The simple-minded sailors were unwilling to cast overboard Jonah at his own request.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The religion of the Bible is the best in the world. I see the infinite value of religion. Let it be always encouraged. A world of superstition and folly have grown up around its forms and ceremonies. But the truth in it is one of the deep sentiments in human nature.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)