Who is Joe Blow?

Funny things we come across in trying to capture what people are saying.

A veteran was talking about how his military training had helped him after the war. He belonged to a church and they needed to raise some money. So he called the congregation together and said If you had a hard job to give somebody, who would you give it to? The congregation was pretty unanimous about who they’d choose.

But in telling the story, the gentleman said

“And I did it by having all the people come in and the congregation. And I said, Who is the man he—if you looked for someone to give a hard job. Oh, that's Joe Blow. Hey, Joe Blow, stand up. You're now the head of our campaign. Oh, no, not me. Yeah, it's gonna be two weeks, that's all. And we did that all down—the captains, the majors, and all the way through till we organized our whole campaign in an hour's half time.”

But Joe Blow is strictly an American-ism! It doesn’t even make sense to people who aren’t steeped in American culture.

Merriam Webster cites an example of its use from 2020, but I really don’t hear it much any more.

Recent Examples on the Web

Under secret balloting, someone might say, hey, here is $5 to vote for Joe Blow, but the voter could take the money and go into the curtained voting booth and vote for Bill Smith.—Jay Ambrose, Star Tribune, 10 Aug. 2020