"Tommy Atkins" meaning in English

See Tommy Atkins in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proper name

Etymology: Said to be a fictitious name inserted in document templates given to soldiers to guide them in filling out account blanks, etc. in 1815 publication Soldier's Account Book and later in the 1837 King's Regulations Head templates: {{en-proper noun}} Tommy Atkins
  1. Generic term for any British soldier. Categories (topical): Military, People, Personifications Categories (place): United Kingdom Related terms: Adolf, Crapaud, Fritz, Frog, Gerry, Jerry, Roastbeef, Tojo Coordinate_terms: Billy Yank, Johnny Reb

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for Tommy Atkins meaning in English (2.8kB)

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  "etymology_text": "Said to be a fictitious name inserted in document templates given to soldiers to guide them in filling out account blanks, etc. in 1815 publication Soldier's Account Book and later in the 1837 King's Regulations",
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          "orig": "en:Military",
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          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Personifications",
          "orig": "en:Personifications",
          "parents": [
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            "Literature",
            "Theater",
            "Culture",
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            "Writing",
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          "source": "w"
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          "kind": "place",
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          "orig": "en:United Kingdom",
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      "coordinate_terms": [
        {
          "word": "Billy Yank"
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          "word": "Johnny Reb"
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        {
          "ref": "1892, Rudyard Kipling, Tommy",
          "text": "O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' \"Tommy, go away\";\nBut it's \"Thank you, Mister Atkins\", when the band begins to play",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1978, Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance, Back Bay Books, published 2002, page 507",
          "text": "A voice I don't want to listen to tells me that this is England's last land triumph; that our military history ends here[…]. Tommy Atkins will serve with pluck and valor wherever he fights hereafter, as always; but the conduct of the war is passing out of our hands.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
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      "glosses": [
        "Generic term for any British soldier."
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      "id": "en-Tommy_Atkins-en-name-kRTlayc7",
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      "related": [
        {
          "word": "Adolf"
        },
        {
          "word": "Crapaud"
        },
        {
          "word": "Fritz"
        },
        {
          "word": "Frog"
        },
        {
          "word": "Gerry"
        },
        {
          "word": "Jerry"
        },
        {
          "word": "Roastbeef"
        },
        {
          "word": "Tojo"
        }
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  "word": "Tommy Atkins"
}
{
  "coordinate_terms": [
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      "word": "Billy Yank"
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    {
      "word": "Johnny Reb"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Said to be a fictitious name inserted in document templates given to soldiers to guide them in filling out account blanks, etc. in 1815 publication Soldier's Account Book and later in the 1837 King's Regulations",
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  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "name",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "Adolf"
    },
    {
      "word": "Crapaud"
    },
    {
      "word": "Fritz"
    },
    {
      "word": "Frog"
    },
    {
      "word": "Gerry"
    },
    {
      "word": "Jerry"
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    {
      "word": "Roastbeef"
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    {
      "word": "Tojo"
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        "English terms with quotations",
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          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1978, Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance, Back Bay Books, published 2002, page 507",
          "text": "A voice I don't want to listen to tells me that this is England's last land triumph; that our military history ends here[…]. Tommy Atkins will serve with pluck and valor wherever he fights hereafter, as always; but the conduct of the war is passing out of our hands.",
          "type": "quotation"
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      ],
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      ],
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        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "Tommy Atkins"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.