mooning

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The act of exposing one's bare buttocks to other people, usually as a prank or a gesture of contempt.

   The mooning at the rally ended up on the local news that evening.

   A bit of drunken mooning from the balcony got the whole group thrown out of the bar.

   Note

   An old joke lies behind the prank: moon has stood for the buttocks since 1743. The noun for the act came much later, popularized from American student slang in the 1960s. It counts like any event noun, so you can speak of a mooning or a string of moonings. Usually it names a single incident, as in a mooning at a rally.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of moon.

   The teenagers were mooning passing cars from the railway bridge.

   He spent the whole afternoon mooning about, lost in thought.

   Note

   One spelling, several verbs: the participle carries every sense of moon, and the construction tells you which one is meant. With a direct object (mooning passing cars) it is the prank, the only use that shares the story behind the noun for the act. Followed by over or after, it means doting infatuation. With about, it means idle drifting. These last two take no object.

   She has been mooning over that singer for weeks.

   Stop mooning after him and just call him.

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