goon
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: hobbies
ice-hockey
lifestyle
skating
sports
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).
* Etymology 1, noun sense 1 ("hired thug"; circa 1938) is largely influenced by the comic strip character Alice the Goon from the Popeye series.
* Etymology 1, noun sense 3 ("fool") was reinforced by the popular radio program, The Goon Show, starring Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers.
* Etymology 1, noun sense 5 ("guard") was influenced by both etymology 1, noun sense 1 and etymology 1, noun sense 3, though not by The Goon Show reference, which arose about 10 years after WWII.
Inflected forms:
form: goons
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: goons
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: gooning
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: gooned
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: gooned
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A thug; a usually muscular henchman with little intelligence.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: 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.
gloss: A hired and paid person who is assigned to terrorize and kill opponents.
pos: noun
tags: US
countable
informal
uncountable
gloss: A fool; someone who is silly, stupid, awkward, or outlandish.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: 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.
Sending for the goon who sent for me / He's thinking he's hard, yeah, it's Little T
gloss: An enforcer or fighter.
pos: noun
tags: countable
derogatory
uncountable
examples: […]a scout from the Flames came down from Saskatoon, said, "There's always room on our team for a goon"
gloss: A German guard in a prisoner-of-war camp.
pos: noun
tags: UK
countable
uncountable
gloss: One hired to legally kidnap a child and forcibly transport them to a boot camp, boarding school, wilderness therapy, or a similar rehabilitation facility.
pos: noun
tags: countable
slang
uncountable
examples: 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.
gloss: Box wine.
pos: noun
tags: Australia
colloquial
uncountable
examples: Once a tap was designed in the 1970s goon climbed quickly to make up about 50 per cent of wine sales in Australia. In the days when restaurants sold "house wine", goon was known for being economical above anything else, and convenient, associated more with families on a budget and people on low incomes.
gloss: A member of the comedy website Something Awful.
pos: noun
tags: Internet
countable
uncountable
examples: 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.
gloss: To act like a goon; to act in an intimidating or aggressive way towards opponents.
pos: verb
tags: slang
transitive
examples: In the mid-week game against the Czech republic, the Czech team speared, slashed, tripped, gooned, and in more cases than I recall, crosschecked Canadian players in the teeth.
Imagine losing to a team that gooned it up and attempted to take out your best players with heavy hits?
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.
gloss: To legally kidnap a child and forcibly transport them to a boot camp, boarding school, wilderness therapy, or a similar rehabilitation facility.
pos: verb
tags: neologism
examples: 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.
Some described being "gooned" in the middle of the night by strongmen hired by their family to forcibly transport them to camp.
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.
Related words: gooney
gooney bird
goonie
Derived words: goon baiting
goonery
goonish
goonlike
goon squad
goon stick
goon suit
goony
troon
goon cave
gooner
-goon
goon out
gooning
Translations: