John Q. Public

English Etymology First use appears c. 1938. John Q. Public was the name of a character created by Vaughn Shoemaker, an editorial cartoonist for the Chicago Daily News from 1922 to 1952; Shoemaker introduced this character in 1922 but is believed to have added the "Q." sometime in the early 1930s. Compare also en John Doe#Etymology. en Pronunciation en En-au-John Q. Public.ogg AU Noun John Q. Public - en idiomatic A generic individual; some hypothetical average or ordinary citizen. en Joe Average Joe Bloggs Joe Blow Joe Doakes Joe Public Joe Q. Public Joe Schmoe J. Random User man on the street en John Doe Jane Doe ; Richard Roe Jane Roe ; John Smith en everyman#Noun Tom, Dick or Harry Joe Sixpack en Even careful safety precautions in the factory do not make it a good place for John Q. Public to wander unattended. Related terms en John Q. Law Translations a generic individual; some hypothetical average or ordinary citizen Czech: cs Jan Novák m Dutch: nl Jan Janssen m Flanders Finnish: fi Matti Meikäläinen French: fr Jean Dupont m German: de Hans Meier m Austria, Switzerland, de Max Mustermann m, de Otto Normalverbraucher m Italian: it Mario Rossi m Polish: pl Jan Kowalski m-pr Portuguese: pt Manuel Dos Santos m Portugal, pt João da Silva m Brazil, pt José da Silva m, pt Zé da Silva m Russian: ru Ива́н Ива́нович m-an Serbo-Croatian: sh Marko Marković m See also en Joe Schmoe Further reading s7m3lti n en placeholder terms en People Personifications