English Explanatory Dictionary

Jonestown

English dictionary entry

Meanings

name
  1. A former settlement in northern Guyana founded by the Peoples Temple cult, and the site of an infamous mass murder-suicide in November 1978.
  2. The Jonestown massacre itself.
  3. Any of a number of other places in the English-speaking world.
noun
  1. Any mass suicide or murder, especially one with religious or cultic overtones.

Word forms

Jonestown Jonestowns

Etymology

From Jones + town, after Reverend Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple.

Related words

drink the Kool-Aid

Derived words

Jonestowner
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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