goon
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɡuːn/
rhymes: -uːn
Forms: form: goons
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: Efforts to unionize were routinely met with clubbings, shootings, jailings, blacklistings and executions, perpetrated not only by well-armed legions of company goons, but also by police officers, deputies, National Guardsmen and even regular soldiers.
ref: 2009 February 22, Kevin Baker, “Blood on the Street”, in New York Times:
glosses: A thug; a usually muscular henchman with little intelligence.
glosses: A hired and paid person who is assigned to terrorize and kill opponents.
examples: text: Mr. Campion appeared suitably impressed and she warmed to him. He was very easy to talk to with those long clown lines in his pale face, a natural goon, born rather too early she suspected.
ref: 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 5, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
text: Sending for the goon who sent for me / He's thinking he's hard, yeah, it's Little T
ref: 2016 May 5, “Thinking He's Hard (Little T Reply)”, performed by Soph Aspin:
glosses: A fool; someone who is silly, stupid, awkward, or outlandish.
examples: text: […]a scout from the Flames came down from Saskatoon, said, "There's always room on our team for a goon"
ref: 2002, “Hit Somebody!”, performed by Warren Zevon:
topics: hobbies
ice-hockey
lifestyle
skating
sports
glosses: An enforcer or fighter.
qualifier: World War II; PoW slang; World War II; PoW slang
glosses: A German guard in a prisoner-of-war camp.
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:
glosses: One hired to legally kidnap a child and forcibly transport them to a boot camp, boarding school, wilderness therapy, or a similar rehabilitation facility.
examples: text: These first two steps were time-sensitive. Not only did goons need to beat Imgur's mid-May deadline but they also needed to account for the possibility that Imgur would treat the download as some kind of attack and throttle it — a possibility that, it turns out, never came to pass.
ref: 2023 May 8, Adi Robertson, “Something Awful is racing to save the best and worst of web history”, in The Verge, archived from the original on 12 Aug 2023:
related: word: Goon
glosses: A member of the comedy website Something Awful.
Derived terms: goon baiting
goon cave
gooner
goonery
goonish
goonlike
goon squad
goon stick
goon suit
goony
troon
Related terms: gooney
gooney bird
goonie