Johnny Raw

A Verdant Green; a newly-enlisted soldier; an adult apprentice in the ship-trade.

“The impulse given to ship-building by the continental war, induced employers to take persons as apprentices who had already passed their majority. This class of men-apprentices, generally from remote towns, were called ‘Johnny Rawsʹ by the fraternity.”—C. Thomson: Autobiography, p. 73.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.