Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a clergyman, esp. in the services or in a prison.

1842		Columbia Democrat (Bloomsburg, PA) 23 July 2/3: The holy Joe fears the consequences of my disclosures.
1863		K. Olson Music and Musket (1981) 21 Feb. 109: The best meeting I ever attended in the Army, at Holy Jo’s tent.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1876		Hawaiian Gaz. (Honolulu) 16 Feb. 4/3: His parents, seein’ that he hadn’t sense enough for a sailorman, concluded to make a ‘Holy Joe’ out of him.
1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 15 Apr. 2/2: Then, old ‘holy Joe’ you’d have them [i.e. ‘sinful’ actresses] on the hip.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 5: Holy Joe - A sea term for a parson.
1885		M. Davitt Leaves from a Prison Diary I 167: ‘Holy Joe.’ ‘Who is he, pray?’ ‘Oh! that is our chaplain.’.
1891		A. Day Mysterious Beggar 214: I mean th’ holy Joes: th’ cushion smiters. Them as holds a palaver uv a Sunday in th’ cackle tubs in th’ big churches.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 31 Jan. 8/2: When ever I can bowl a bilious, hypocritical Holy Joe out in a meanness I like to do it.
1905		Wash. Post 15 Jan. 4/3: ‘Holy Joe’ — their [i.e. schoolboys] name for the chaplain of their institution.
1902		Truth (Sydney) 31 Aug. 8/3: Legitimate amusment, / Merriment of any kind, / It are by the Joes forbidden.
1914		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 15 Apr. 3/2: If a girl takes up her lodgin’s / At a place run by the Joes, / She goes to be taken care of .
1917		A.G. Empey Over the Top 90: If ‘Holy Joe’ could have heard our remarks about the Divisional Baths and army red tape, he would have fainted at our wickedness.
1925		(con. WWI) Fraser & Gibbons Soldier and Sailor Words 120: Holy Joe: A Chaplain.
1934		C. Stead Seven Poor Men of Sydney 111: The planter comes along and says, ‘Out y’ go, nigger, I don’t want no ’oly joes,’ and the nigger says, ‘I’m doin’ the devil’s work, not the other’s’.
1945		N. Marsh Died in the Wool (1963) 184: Comes the holy Jo over a drop of Johnny Walker.
1946		J. Evans Halo in Blood (1988) 17: No guy could of led the kind of life that needs twelve Holy Joes to get him past the Pearly Gates, could he?
1959		D. Niland Big Smoke 145: The holy joe come here lookin’ for you.
1961		S. Hugill Shanties from the Seven Seas 593: Holy Joe. Sailor name for a parson.
1975		A. Bleasdale Scully 14: His Mam had a big fight with Holy Joe O’Malley over something just after he’d become Parish Priest.
1978		(con. 1940s) O. Manning Battle Lost and Won 252: They say he’s a holy Joe. Thinks he’s got a direct line to God.
1991		B. Quinn Smokey Hollow 99: He was always referring to Holy Joes and crawthumpers.
2012		D. O’Donnell Locked Ward (2013) 115: Holy Joes don’t do irony, as a rule.
2021		L. McInerney Rules of Revelation 168: [of a schoolteacher/priest] [H]er own son having been dragged up by Holy Joes till he was a plague all by himself.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1905		Sun. Times (Perth) 15 Jan. 1/1: The Holy Joe Premier is become an increasingly interested visitor to races.
1905		Truth (Perth) 4 Mar. 2/6: He confesses his mistake / To sum Holy Joseph jossers / As did run a Shellback church.
1951		J.D. Salinger Catcher in the Rye (1958) 105: I can’t even stand ministers. The ones they’ve had at every school I’ve gone to, they all have these Holy Joe voices when they start giving their sermons. God, I hate that. I don’t see why the hell they can’t talk in their natural voice.
1975		H. Ellison ‘The Whimper of Whipped Dogs’ in Deathbird Stories (1978) 29: I have to play patty-cake with the ministers and other sanctified holy-joe assholes.

3. anyone of a religious bent.

1837		J. Robinson in Jacobson Stories of Banks’ Peninsula (1884) 152: There was another white man living here at the time, known as Holy Joe.
1889–90		Barrère & Leland Dict. of Sl., Jargon and Cant.
1913		E. Pugh Punch and Judy 7: Holy Jo [...] had been converted, as the phrase goes, at a Baptist revival.
1937		‘Red Collar Man’ ‘Chokey’ 177: I found that Holy Joe, a principal jailer who, besides being excessively religious, was a holy terror.
1947		Sun. Post (Lanarks) 1 June 8/4: Holy Joe [...] said he was studying for the ministry.
1951		D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 230: My old man was a bit of a holy Joe.
1962		M.K. Joseph Pound of Saffron 249: Harry calls him a holy joe, but he helped Harry out of a bad scrape.
1999		N. Cohn Yes We Have No 311: The language of the new movements [...] Men Alive for God, the holy Joes and many others.

4. (also holy Joey holy Josie) a prudish, sanctimonious, narrow-minded puritan; thus holy joe, holy joeism, puritanism, sanctimony.

1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 30 Oct. 4/4: A solicitor of pretentious opinions at Armidale is known as ‘Holy Joe,’ and his particular friend has his title ‘God-be,’ and when they are seen together they are hailed as ‘Holy Joe and God-be with him’.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Mar. 1/3: [The] Telegraph had condemned as immoral certain paintings in the French Court. But the Telegraph soon found that it had made a grand mistake, that everybody laughed heartily at it, and ridiculed its ‘Holy Joeyism,’ and so no more was said by it on the matter.
1881		Bulletin (Sydney) 19 Mar. 2/1: A few overfed clerical bullies and the compact phalanx of ‘Holy Joeys’ who hang to their coat-tails have quite made up their minds that coffee stalls should be abolished.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 4 Nov. 1/5: I hastened to assure him that I did niot possess any Holy joe whatsoever.
1899		R. Whiteing No. 5 John Street 39: That’s Holy Joe [...] he wouldn’t be a bad sort if he’d only enj’y hisself.
1901		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 5 June 1/8: Holy Joe Cook in the House of Reps and Jawbone Nield in the senate.
1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 13 Mar. 2nd sect. 10/4: The fatality will no doubt give the wowsers aad Holy Joes of England some cause to howl anent the brutality of boxing.
1914		Truth (Melbourne) 31 Jan. 5/6: With their Holy Joseph fakements / And their crook morality.
1925		(con. WWI) Fraser & Gibbons Soldier and Sailor Words 120: Holy Joe: [...] A man affecting piety.
c.1930		(ref. to late 19C) N. Kimball Amer. Madam (1981) 104: The old swindles went on. Maybe because the fine people and the holy Joes owned the rookeries and the whorehouses.
1941		Baker Popular Dict. Aus. Sl. 35: Holy Joes, prudish, narrow-minded puritans.
1956		H. Gold Man Who Was Not With It (1965) 285: You’re no holy joe yourself.
1963		in T.I. Rubin Sweet Daddy 42: Most of these guys [i.e. moralists] would like a good gang-bang themselves but make like holy Joes instead.
1974		‘P.B. Yuill’ Hazell Plays Solomon (1976) 60: I never was [corrupt] but knowing what a dour old holy joe he was, even at twenty-three, I liked to joke about it.
1986		J.B. Keane Bodhrán Makers 305: Better be with him than at the mercy of contrary priests and arse-lickin’ holy Josies.
1987		G.A. Fine With the Boys 182: In their school there are three groups of kids: rowdies, in-betweens, and goody-goodies (or Holy Joes).
2001		G. Coughlan Everyday Eng. and Sl. 🌐 Holy joe (n): sanctimonious person.
2013		K. Sampson Killing Pool 11: The bint sitting there, all snooty-faced [...] looking down on us like Holy Joe.
2018		I. Welsh Dead Man’s Trousers 135: — He was a bit ay a Holy Joe the last time I saw him.