www.alphadictionary.com

• goon •

Pronunciation: gun • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: (Slang) 1. A booby, lame-brain, nitwit, nincompoop, dimwit, pinhead, dunce, dunderhead, blockhead, numbskull, oaf. 2. A hired thug whose job is to intimidate specific people or groups of people.

Notes: Today's Good Word is an absolute lexical orphan: no derivational relatives. What we think of now as juvenile delinquents, in the 1940s were sometimes called goonlets, but that word hasn't stuck, so must be considered a nonce word.

In Play: This word in its first sense does not make any reference to weight: "Who is the goon over there trying to impress Tiffany Lampe with his tattoos and eyebrow rings?" In this second sense it refers to hefty thugs that usually accompany a mobster: "Jimmy the Window never appears in public without his goon squad."

Word History: Today's Good Word is a shortened form of gooney "a booby, simpleton, moron", an expansion of earlier gony. It might be related to Scots Gaelic gonyel "stupid fellow" but, if so, the trail ends there. The gooney bird was so named because the awkward way it takes off and lands makes the bird look stupid. The word goon referring to a tough or thug was first recorded in 1938 in reference to union "beef squads" used to intimidate workers in the Pacific northwest. This usage probably was based on Alice the Goon, a muscular simpleton in the Popeye comic strip. She also was the inspiration for British comedian Spike Milligan's The Goon Show. (Chris Stewart never associates with goons but did recommend the word as today's Good Word.)

In Australian "goon" is also used to mean cheap wine. It is a contraction of "flagon", being a large glass bottle (about 2 litres) in which cheap wine used to be sold.

Also "goon bag", which is cheap wine sold in cartons that contain the wine in a shiny metallised plastic bladder.

I know the noun "goonery" meaning tomfoolery, but perhaps it's British usage.
Eileen

I know the noun "goonery" meaning tomfoolery, but perhaps it's British usage.
Eileen

I wonder if it's Cockney slang, given the rhyme.

It was used in an NYT headline in 2012, but as it was about hockey, it rather obviously meant the actions of goons/thugs.

I'm becoming entirely too cynical, but I identify with
all the US Federal Government when I hear the word.