goon

See also: Goon, góon, gōon, go on, go-on, and ĝo-on

English

Etymology 1

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.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ˈɡuːn/
Audio (US): (file)
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Rhymes: -uːn

Noun

goon (plural goons)

A thug; a usually muscular henchman with little intelligence.
- 2009 February 22, Kevin Baker, “Blood on the Street”, in New York Times‎^[1]:
  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.
(US, informal) A hired & paid person who is assigned to terrorize & kill opponents.
A fool; someone who is silly, stupid, awkward, or outlandish.
- 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 5, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
  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.
- 2016 May 5, “Thinking He's Hard (Little T Reply)”, performed by Soph Aspin:
  Sending for the goon who sent for me / He's thinking he's hard, yeah, it's Little T
(ice hockey, derogatory) An enforcer or fighter.
- 2002, “Hit Somebody!”, performed by Warren Zevon:
  […] a scout from the Flames came down from Saskatoon, said, "There's always room on our team for a goon"
(UK, World War II, PoW slang) A German guard in a prisoner-of-war camp.
(slang) One hired to legally kidnap a child and forcibly transport them to a boot camp, boarding school, wilderness therapy, or a similar rehabilitation facility.
- 2016 October 20, Laura Collins-Hughes, “Therapy Becomes Theater in 'Wilderness'”, in New York Times‎^[2]:
  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.
(Internet slang) A member of the comedy website Something Awful.
Alternative form: Goon
- 2023 May 8, Adi Robertson, “Something Awful is racing to save the best and worst of web history”, in The Verge‎^[3], archived from the original on 2023-08-12:
  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.

Derived terms

Related terms

Descendants

→ Portuguese: guna

Translations

thug — see thug

fool — see fool

Verb

goon (third-person singular simple present goons, present participle gooning, simple past and past participle gooned)

(transitive, slang, ice hockey) To act like a goon; to act in an intimidating or aggressive way towards opponents.
- 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^[4], archived from the original on 2016-01-24:
  The 23-year-old posted some photos on Instagram on Saturday of himself gooning around for the camera.
- 2019 June 13, Dan Shaughnessy, “What experts are saying about the Bruins' Stanley Cup loss”, in The Boston Globe‎^[5], archived from the original on 2022-12-22:
  Imagine losing to a team that gooned it up and attempted to take out your best players with heavy hits?
- 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^[6], archived from the original on 2022-12-22:
  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.
(neologism) To legally kidnap a child and forcibly transport them to a boot camp, boarding school, wilderness therapy, or a similar rehabilitation facility.
- 2016 October 20, Laura Collins-Hughes, “Therapy Becomes Theater in 'Wilderness'”, in New York Times‎^[7]:
  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.
- 2022 November 14, Nicolle Okoren, “The wilderness 'therapy' that teens say feels like abuse: 'You are on guard at all times'”, in The Guardian‎^[8]:
  Some described being "gooned" in the middle of the night by strongmen hired by their family to forcibly transport them to camp.
- 2022 October 9, Rozina Sabur, “Troubled US teenagers 'snatched' at their parents' request”, in The Telegraph‎^[9]:
  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.

Derived terms

goon out
gooning (noun)

Etymology 2

Perhaps diminutive slang for flagon or from Aboriginal English goom.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ˈɡuːn/
Audio (US): (file)
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Rhymes: -uːn

Noun

goon (countable and uncountable, plural goons)

(countable, Australia, informal) A wine flagon or cask.
- 2009, Stephen Cummings, Will It Be Funny Tomorrow, Billy?: Misadventures in Music, page 11:
  We drank goons of cheap wine.
(uncountable, Australia, informal) Cheap or inferior cask wine.
- 2010, Patrick Holland, The Mary Smokes Boys, page 128:
  ‘On the night of our school graduation he stole a flagon of goon wine and disappeared into the woods. The police found him the next day asleep on the creek. […] ’
- 2010, Jason Leung, This All Encompassing Trip: Chasing Pearl Jam Around the World, page 384:
  With these instructions, we take turns sipping the wine directly from the bottle on the beach. It′s not the classiest thing to do but the fact that it′s in a bottle already makes it classier than all the boxes of goon we′ve consumed this trip.
- 2011, E.C. McSween et al., Boganomics: The Science of Things Bogans Like, unnumbered page:
  Red wine was consumed largely by posh folk, white wine meant goon, mention of a Jägerbomb would have sent its father ducking for cover, and ‘sex on the beach’ meant just that.

Etymology 3

Borrowed from Japanese 呉音 (goon).

Alternative forms

go'on, go-on

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɡəʊˌɒn/
(US) IPA^(key): /ˈɡoʊˌɑn/
Rhymes: -əʊɒn
Hyphenation: go‧on
Homophone: go on

Noun

goon (uncountable)

A Sino-Japanese kanji pronunciation layer, considered the first Sino-Japanese kanji reading type imported into Japan.
The Buddhist term 権化 is read as gonge, using the kanji's goon readings.

Etymology 4

Possibly derived from etymology 1, from sense 3 ("a fool; a stupid person"), or from sense 1 ("a thug").

Verb

goon (third-person singular simple present goons, present participle gooning, simple past and past participle gooned)

(Internet slang) To masturbate for long periods of time without reaching a climax, thus reaching a hypnotic, trance-like state.
Near-synonym: edge
- 2020 November 21, Michael Stahl, “The Psychedelic Science of 'Gooning' — Or Masturbating Into a Trance”, in MEL Magazine‎^[10], archived from the original on 2022-07-07:
  To goon, Christfister says, "Instead of powering through and jerking off 100 percent to orgasm, you ease off around 90 percent and slowly build up" to the point of no return.
- 2023 March 13, Samantha Cole, quoting u/420j0bud, “Enter the Goon Cave, Where Porn and Masturbation Is All That Exists”, in Vice‎^[11], archived from the original on 2023-06-13:
  Some gooners use poppers and prescription or illicit drugs to enhance their cave time. “I love to use Adderall or Vyvanse when I goon, it gets you super hyper fixed on the porn, and also very slightly dulls your sensitivity, making you stay on the edge for literally fucking HOURS,” Redditor 420j0bud told me.

Derived terms

Anagrams

gono-, no go, no-go, nogo, noog, ongo, go on

Eastern Ojibwa

Noun

goon anim

snow

References

Jerry Randolph Valentine (2001) Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar, University of Toronto, page 117

Esperanto

Noun

goon

accusative singular of goo

Japanese

Romanization

goon

Rōmaji transcription of ごおん

Middle English

Verb

goon

Alternative form of gon (“to go”)

Ojibwe

Noun

goon anim (obviative goonan, diminutive goonens, locative gooning, distributive locative goonikaang)

snow
Gii-gichi-onzaamiino goon gii-biboonagak.
There was a lot of snow this winter.

Ottawa

Noun

goon anim

snow

References

Jerry Randolph Valentine (2001) Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar, University of Toronto, page 117