1. (Old Testament) A personnage of in the Bible: Jonah did not wish to become a prophet so God caused a great storm to throw him overboard from a ship; he was saved by being swallowed by a whale that vomited him out onto dry land.
2. A book in the Old Testament that tells the story of Jonah and the whale.
(lived 7th century BC) Hebrew prophet whose name is given to a book in the Old Testament. According to this, he fled by ship to evade his mission to prophesy the destruction of Nineveh. The crew threw him overboard in a storm, as a bringer of ill fortune, and he spent three days and nights in the belly of a whale before coming to land.

A person believed to bring bad luck to those around him; SYN. jinx.