boon
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /buːn/
rhymes: -uːn
Forms: form: boons
Etymology: From Middle English boon (“prayer”), from Old Norse bón (“prayer, petition”), from Proto-Germanic *bōniz (“supplication”), influenced by boon (“good, favorable”, adjective). Doublet of ben; see there for more.
Senses: examples: text: Near-synonyms: gift; blessing, benefit; see also Thesaurus:gift
text: Finding the dry cave was a boon to the weary travellers.
text: Anaesthetics are a great boon to modern surgery.
text: Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus. […] A photo processing technique called focus stacking has changed that. Developed as a tool to electronically combine the sharpest bits of multiple digital images, focus stacking is a boon to biologists seeking full focus on a micron scale.
ref: 2013 July–August, Catherine Clabby, “Focus on Everything”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 4, archived from the original on 07 Sep 2013:
text: Supporters of the measure, which Parliament is expected to vote on next Monday, present it as a boon for democracy: a modest limit on the ways in which an elected government can be stymied by unelected judges, who will in any case still have other tools to overrule ministers.
ref: 2023 July 21, Patrick Kingsley, “What’s Reasonable? A Debate Over a High Court’s Reach Divides Israel.”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 25 Jul 2023:
text: President Joe Biden has declared - approvingly - that a “long war” is ahead between Israel and Hamas. Washington seems to relish long wars, which always prove a boon to its arms industries and a distraction from domestic troubles.
ref: 2023 October 11, Jonathan Cook, “Israel-Palestine war: The blood of Gaza is on the West’s hands as much as Israel’s”, in Middle East Eye:
antonyms: bane#Noun
glosses: A good thing; a thing to be thankful for or to appreciate duly.
examples: text: I gave you life. Can you not return the boon by giving me death, my lord?
ref: 1871, James De Mille, The Cryptogram, New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC, page 194, column 2:
text: Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.
ref: 1881, English Revised Version, The New Testament, in the revised version of 1881, with fuller references, Oxford: Oxford University Press, published 1910, James 1:17, page 548:
text: [T]he hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man[.]
ref: 1949, Joseph Campbell, “The Hero and the God”, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces:
glosses: That which is asked or granted as a benefit or favor; a gift or benefaction.
examples: text: The wofull husbandman doth lowd complaine, / To ſee his whole yeares labor loſt ſo ſoone, / For which to God he made ſo many an idle boone.
ref: 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 34, page 503:
glosses: A prayer; petition.
glosses: An unpaid service due by a tenant to his lord.
examples: text: A telling story is that of Vikra, who, after practicing severe tapas for many years, called on Śiva, asking him to grant the boon that whosoever's head he would touch, that person would die instantly.
ref: 2007, Klaus Klostermaier, A Survey of Hinduism: Third Edition, New York: State University of New York Press, page 38:
glosses: A blessing, typically a supernatural power, granted to an ascetic by a god or goddess.
Derived terms: boon and bane
boonless
boon or bane