“When Johnny Comes Marching Home”

Cultural  

1. A popular song from the American Civil War. The first stanza is:

   When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah! Hurrah!

   We'll give him a hearty welcome then, hurrah! Hurrah!

   The men will cheer, the boys will shout,

   The ladies, they will all turn out,

   And we'll all feel gay, when Johnny comes marching home.

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Example Sentences

And a patriotic medley that follows, featuring “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” is as blandly perfunctory as a middling college halftime show.

From Washington Post

“Whenever the song ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ was played in grade school, I would start crying,” Belmont said.

From Washington Post

Crumb, by contrast, kept the core of the songs he used — “Glory, Hallelujah,” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” “Shenandoah” — and only teased them apart at the edges, setting them adrift in an unfamiliar context of tones and rustles and plonks, or slightly recasting them.

From Washington Post

For instance, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” underlined a kind of war-hysteria by having the soprano almost scream the chorus, repeatedly, before dropping her into a mournful, exhausted, drooping dirge.

From Washington Post

The selections reached back to early Americana that includes a carping song about Congress and a take that reduced “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” to a mournful dirge.

From Washington Post