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.
Read more about this topic: Jonah
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 difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely—which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.”
—Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986)