"According to Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore it was used by Australian bush rangers in the early 19th century to refer to the dragoons chasing them.Thanks for contributing an answer to English Language & Usage Stack Exchange! In Australia "goon" is slang for casked-wine, and a "goon-bag" is the bladder that such wine is stored in (inside the cask).I definitely didn't suggest that there was an older kinship (as with "widow", "gnosis" and many other words), but, as you say, a case of a word imported during colonial rule (like "pukka" etc). Anybody can ask a question
Shortened from gooney, from obsolete gony ("simpleton", circa 1580), of unknown origin.
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to union "beef squads" used to cow strikers in the Pacific northwest).
Perhaps a familiar term derived from Middle English gone, a variant of gome (“man, person”).
It only takes a minute to sign up.The etymologies of "goon" that I've looked up seem to center on But it seems like at least one of the senses of the word, as in "hired company goons", could very well be derived from the Hindi word sense of "hired thug" first recorded 1938 (in ref.
gooney (GONY 1) ‘a booby, a simpleton’; but more immediately from the name of a subhuman creature called Alice the Goon in a popular cartoon series by E. C. Segar (1894-1938), American cartoonist.]" By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. She also was the inspiration for British comedian Spike Milligan's "The Goon Show." goon (n.) 1921, in U.S. humorist Frederick J. Allen's piece "The Goon and His Style" (Harper's Monthly Magazine, December 1921), which defines it as "a person with a heavy touch," one who lacks "a playful mind;" perhaps a made-up word, or from gony "simpleton" (1580s), which was applied by sailors to the albatross and similar big, clumsy birds. The site has become a favorite resource of teachers of reading, spelling, and English as a second language.
English Language & Usage Meta Learn more about Stack Overflow the company The OED gives the etymology as "[Perhaps a shortened form of dial.
How to use goon in a sentence. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top These are generally the most disposable members of a organization, built to take the fall in order to protect the higher ups in the case of illegal activities gone awry that have attracted police attention. Goon -noun 1) A generally low ranking member of a gang or syndicate.
This a closer meaning to the current usage than "booby or simpleton. Note that the Online Etymology Dictionary you linked to says that . Such pairs are called false cognates; there are many examples.. The English word goon and the Hindi word gunda have a similar meaning and form, but are etymologically unrelated; the similarity is just a coincidence.
senses of the word all probably stem from this: Sense of "hired thug" is first recorded 1938 (in reference to union "beef squads" used to cow strikers in the Pacific Northwest).
Also used among American and British POWs in World War II in reference to their German guards.
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Gony was applied by sailors to the albatross and similar big, clumsy birds (circa 1839). But your point about the geographical location where this usage seemingly evolved does seem decide the matter.+1.
Goon definition is - a stupid person. Anybody can answer
It is professional enough to satisfy academic standards, but accessible enough to be used by anyone. Typically the recipients of street-level work. It seems quite likely that the Hindu "gunda" (hoodlum or bully) could be a source of the term "goon," especially since many of the strikers on the receiving end of the company attention would have been of Sikh extraction.
The online etymology dictionary is the internet's go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of English words, phrases, and idioms. What are now "juvenile delinquents" were in the 1940s sometimes called
Mr. Goon also had a spiteful nature.