goon
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɡuːn/
rhymes: -uːn
Forms: form: goons
form: gooning
form: gooned
form: gooned
Etymology: Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *dʰeǵʰ-
Proto-Indo-European *-ōm
Proto-Indo-European *dʰéǵʰōm
Proto-Indo-European *-ō
Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰmṓ
Proto-Germanic *gumô
Proto-West Germanic *gumō
Old English guma
Middle English gone?
English gooney
English goon
Shortened from gooney, from obsolete gony (“simpleton”), used circa 1580, of unknown origin. Perhaps a familiar term derived from Middle English gone, a variant of gome (“man, person”). Gony was applied by sailors to the albatross and similar big, clumsy birds (circa 1839). The term goon first carried the meaning "stupid person" (circa 1921). Compare Scots goni, guni (“a bogey, bugbear, hobgoblin”), dialectal Swedish gonnar (“elves, goblins”, plural).
* Sense 1 ("hired thug"; circa 1938) is largely influenced by the comic strip character Alice the Goon from the Popeye series.
* Sense 3 ("fool") was reinforced by the popular radio program, The Goon Show, starring Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers.
* Sense 5 ("guard") was influenced by both sense 1 and sense 3, though not by The Goon Show reference, which arose about 10 years after WWII.
Senses: examples: text: The 23-year-old posted some photos on Instagram on Saturday of himself gooning around for the camera.
ref: 2015 December 27, “Dennis Quaid's son Jack posts hilarious photo posing with his dad and siblings pulling faces on Christmas Day”, in The Daily Mail, archived from the original on 24 Jan 2016:
text: Imagine losing to a team that gooned it up and attempted to take out your best players with heavy hits?
ref: 2019 June 13, Dan Shaughnessy, “What experts are saying about the Bruins' Stanley Cup loss”, in The Boston Globe, archived from the original on 22 Dec 2022:
text: Obviously, we wanted to kill Kozlov. We thought it was the dirtiest thing in the world. Things picked up after that. We were out for blood after that. We didn't goon them. They gooned us, really, and we just had to respond.
ref: 2022 June 24, David Fleming, quoting Mike Ricci, “Fight Night at the Joe: Remembering the legendary Colorado Avalanche-Detroit Red Wings brawl of 1997”, in ESPN, archived from the original on 22 Dec 2022:
topics: hobbies
ice-hockey
lifestyle
skating
sports
glosses: To act like a goon; to act in an intimidating or aggressive way towards opponents.
examples: text: Owen Jenney, Ms. Hamburger's son, got gooned, though he said his goons turned out to be "really nice guys, actually." He is 19 now, a freshman in college, and he remembers arriving in the wilderness frightened and confused, angrily convinced that sending him across the country to Oregon was "way out of proportion" to the situation.
ref: 2016 October 20, Laura Collins-Hughes, “Therapy Becomes Theater in 'Wilderness'”, in New York Times:
text: Some described being "gooned" in the middle of the night by strongmen hired by their family to forcibly transport them to camp.
ref: 2022 November 14, Nicolle Okoren, “The wilderness 'therapy' that teens say feels like abuse: 'You are on guard at all times'”, in The Guardian:
text: He was soon bungled out of the Patterson family’s California home and into a taxi on the way to the airport. He was being "gooned" - forcibly transported to a place aimed at correcting naughty children's behaviour.
ref: 2022 October 9, Rozina Sabur, “Troubled US teenagers 'snatched' at their parents' request”, in The Telegraph:
glosses: To legally kidnap a child and forcibly transport them to a boot camp, boarding school, wilderness therapy, or a similar rehabilitation facility.
Derived terms: word: goon out
word: gooning