Definition of "goon"

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.

2009 February 22, Kevin Baker, “Blood on the Street”, in New York Times‎

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.

1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 5, in The China Governess‎

Sending for the goon who sent for me / He's thinking he's hard, yeah, it's Little T

2016 May 5, “Thinking He's Hard (Little T Reply)”, performed by Soph Aspin

[…] a scout from the Flames came down from Saskatoon, said, "There's always room on our team for a goon"

2002, “Hit Somebody!”, performed by Warren Zevon

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.

2016 October 20, Laura Collins-Hughes, “Therapy Becomes Theater in 'Wilderness'”, in New York Times‎

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.

2023 May 8, Adi Robertson, “Something Awful is racing to save the best and worst of web history”, in The Verge‎, archived from the original on 2023-08-12

The 23-year-old posted some photos on Instagram on Saturday of himself gooning around for the camera.

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, archived from the original on 2016-01-24

Imagine losing to a team that gooned it up and attempted to take out your best players with heavy hits?

2019 June 13, Dan Shaughnessy, “What experts are saying about the Bruins' Stanley Cup loss”, in The Boston Globe‎, 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.

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, archived from the original on 2022-12-22

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.

2016 October 20, Laura Collins-Hughes, “Therapy Becomes Theater in 'Wilderness'”, in New York Times‎

Some described being "gooned" in the middle of the night by strongmen hired by their family to forcibly transport them to camp.

2022 November 14, Nicolle Okoren, “The wilderness 'therapy' that teens say feels like abuse: 'You are on guard at all times'”, in The Guardian‎

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.

2022 October 9, Rozina Sabur, “Troubled US teenagers 'snatched' at their parents' request”, in The Telegraph‎

We drank goons of cheap wine.

2009, Stephen Cummings, Will It Be Funny Tomorrow, Billy?: Misadventures in Music, page 11

‘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, Patrick Holland, The Mary Smokes Boys, unnumbered page

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.

2010, Jason Leung, This All Encompassing Trip: Chasing Pearl Jam Around the World, page 384

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.

2011, E.C. McSween et al., Boganomics: The Science of Things Bogans Like, unnumbered page

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.

2020 November 21, Michael Stahl, “The Psychedelic Science of 'Gooning' — Or Masturbating Into a Trance”, in MEL Magazine‎, archived from the original on 2022-07-07

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.

2023 March 13, Samantha Cole, quoting u/420j0bud, “Enter the Goon Cave, Where Porn and Masturbation Is All That Exists”, in VICE‎, archived from the original on 2023-06-13