# goon

Pronunciation: say "GOON" /ɡuːn/

## Noun

1. A thug, typically a hired one employed to intimidate, hurt, or even kill people for someone else.
   - Simple: A rough, violent man, often paid by someone powerful to scare or hurt people.
   - _A hulking goon blocked the doorway until his boss gave a nod._
   - _The gang leader's goons were all muscle and no brains, and they fell for the oldest trick in the book._
2. A foolish or stupid person whose behavior is silly, clumsy, or bizarre.
   - Simple: A silly or foolish person who acts in a strange or clumsy way.
   - _Stop acting like a goon and help me carry these bags._
   - _With his long face and floppy hat, he looked like a lovable goon from an old comedy._
3. In ice hockey, a disparaging name for a team's enforcer or fighter.
   - Simple: In ice hockey, an unkind name for a player whose main job is to fight.
   - _The coach called up a goon from the minors to protect his star center._
   - _Fans booed when the visiting team's goon started another fight in the second period._
4. A participant in the online community of the humor website Something Awful.
   - Simple: A person who belongs to the comedy website Something Awful.
   - _As a longtime goon, he still checks the Something Awful forums every morning._
   - _A group of Something Awful goons organized a charity drive in a single weekend._
6. Australian informal: cheap wine sold in a cask, or a cask or flagon of it. *(colloquial, Australia)*
   - Simple: In Australia, cheap wine that comes in a box, or one box of it.
   - _We spent our last summer at uni drinking goon on the back verandah._
   - _A cask of goon from the bottle shop was all the backpackers could afford._
8. A person hired to seize a child, legally but by force, and take them to a boot camp, boarding school, wilderness therapy program or similar facility. *(slang)*
   - Simple: A person paid to take a child by force to a special camp or school, with the parents' permission.
   - _Two goons woke her at four in the morning and drove her to a wilderness camp three states away._
   - _Her parents paid a goon to escort her brother to a boarding school for troubled teens._

## Verb

5. In ice hockey, to play like a goon, using rough and intimidating tactics against opponents. *(slang)*
   - Simple: In ice hockey, to play rough and try to scare or hurt the other team.
   - _The visitors tried to goon our best players with late hits all night._
   - _Down three goals, the home team gooned it up, and the game turned into a brawl._
7. Slang: to masturbate, especially for a long time while holding off climax. *(slang)*
   - Simple: To touch yourself sexually, especially for a long time while holding off a climax.
   - _The reporter interviewed men who goon for hours at a stretch._
   - _On a recovery forum, one user asked how to stop gooning to porn until dawn._
9. To seize a child, legally but by force, and take them to a boot camp, boarding school, wilderness therapy program or similar facility. *(slang)*
   - Simple: To take a child by force to a special camp or school, with the parents' permission.
   - _He was gooned at sixteen and spent eight months at a camp in the desert._
   - _Some parents still pay companies to goon their teenagers in the middle of the night._

## Other meanings

- (noun) A German soldier assigned to guard captives in a prisoner-of-war camp.
- (noun) A layer of Sino-Japanese kanji pronunciations, considered the earliest type of Sino-Japanese reading used in Japan.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–5, 8–9** — Shortened from gooney, from obsolete gony ("simpleton", around 1580), of unknown origin, perhaps from Middle English gone, a variant of gome ("man, person"); sailors later applied gony to the albatross and similar big, clumsy birds. Goon first meant "stupid person" around 1921; the "hired thug" meaning (around 1938) was largely influenced by Alice the Goon from the Popeye comic strip, and the "fool" meaning was reinforced by the radio program The Goon Show.
**Meaning 6** — One guess is that it began as a slang diminutive of flagon. Another links it to goom in Aboriginal English.
**Meaning 7** — Possibly derived from the first goon, either from its meaning "a fool; a stupid person" or from its meaning "a thug".

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/goon (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).