I’m an old guy and apparently I’ve been walking around calling people “goons” thinking I’m channeling The Sopranos, when in reality I’ve been accusing them of… furiously polishing the ol’ bishop.
When did “goon” stop meaning low-level street thug and start meaning someone who’s on a solo mission to the shame cave?
I told a younger dude at work, “Quit acting like a goon,” and he looked at me like I just exposed his browser history.
When did this slang change ???
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I can’t with the lingo these days… it’s totes skibidi toilet.
It has multiple meanings. To younger folk it may be referring to a particular form of masturbation.
Oh lawd! I call kids “goons” all the time when I’m teasing them. Yikes!
That word always makes me think of the little bunny foo foo song. Now that has a whole different and disturbing connotation!
I think the rise of discord had a lot to do with it
People join gooning discords to share pirn and jerk off with each other. Idgi, honestly
So, apparently the earliest record online is an Urban Dictionary entry from 2005, which is way earlier than I was expecting. Apparently it derives from the more traditional definition in that one keeps jerkin’ on their gherkin until they’re so fixated on masturbating that they’ve been reduced to a stupid person, aka a goon. Urban Dictionary Source
According to KnowYourMeme, it remained an obscure sex term until 2019, when someone made a subreddit for the practice. Since then it’s gotten more widespread recognition and more or less become the default use of the term. Know Your Meme Source
I’m guessing this was helped by the fact that using “goon” as a term for idiots, thugs, or henchmen was already becoming a bit antiquated, so as soon as a new definition that described something that is very relevant to the interests of many internet denizens started spreading, it’s new usage way outpaced anyone using it in the more traditional way. For an additional reference, the YouTuber Wendigoon (whose name is based on the earlier usage and whose channel does not revolve around masturbation in an capacity) started his channel in 2019 and started becoming popular (i.e. past the point where he could easily change his name as he had done before) in 2020, so that gives a bit of a timeframe for when the new definition was still spreading, but had not yet reached the point where it could be called a commonly known term.
I started singing “Goons Lurking” by Plies.
Surprisingly (to me at least), Urban Dictionary has an entry that dates to 2006.
I remember goon being what you say it means. Specifically, I remember it referring to an enforcer in ice hockey that doesn’t really have hockey skills and is just there to start fights.
Well there’s double meaning to the word I call my dog a goon and sometimes gooner it’s a funny word if anyone said anything to me about it I would err on the side of safety and say it means thugs or henchmen and not that they edge themselves to oblivion.
My question is this: when did Gooning become mainstream? I remember hearing about Gooning and gooners in the deep parts of the Internet. 4Chan, degenerate subreddits, etc. These terms were for people with porn addiction or chronic masturbation problems. When did Goon become the common vernacular for jerking off?
I missed the transition I guess.
Here in Australia goon means cheap wine often consumed by underage teenagers
goon’s new meaning is a verb btw. Gooners goon the same way shooters shoot
Ask an Australian what goon means.
https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/goon-connoisseur/
Goon (noun) still means what you think it does.
Goon (verb) is the act of masturbating for a very extended period of time.
Gooner (noun) is someone who goons.
But it is not surprising that younger people would hear the word “Goon” and only think of the newer slang.
Try being an Arsenal football club fan, whose nickname is Gunners, and also sometimes called Gooners. There is a global community of message board usernames that now make us look like a masturbation cult.
Lowkey in like the last year, started online, you can trust me cause I used lowkey
I don’t know when it happened but there’s a fun meme comic where a bunch of unshaved people with anime shirts show up to a Mafia boss, and a bunch of thugs show up to an unshaved lonely guy, and both say “I thought I ordered goons”
I wonder whether the new gooning meaning came from gurning, pulling ugly faces, as I guess a face pulled when edging is probably the same.
I’m old enough to remember the cartoon character Alice the Goon …
Back in the day a goon was somebody who frequented the somethingawful forums
Hockey, porn or thug??
I’m guessing it happened when Despicable Me came out. That type of job started getting referred to more as minions, and goon got repurposed into whatever sexual thing it means now.
Wait, I thought the modern meaning was pluralized as “gooners”?
I blame The Game Grumps (specifically Arin) for popularizing his term “gooning” for spanking the monkey.
Late 90s/Early 2000s.
“I PREFER THE HANDS-ON TOUCH
YOU ONLY GET WITH HIRED GOONS.”
It still means that, don’t let the kids ruin it
As a Canadian this new slang is really hard to accept
Gooning your way into a stanley cup has a completely different meaning now
As an Australian, goon means box wine to us. Aka goon of fortune
I’ve been calling people goons for like 20 years lol. I’m not gonna stop.
Am I the only one who thinks of Popaye in Goonland? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030198/
> start meaning someone who’s on a solo mission to the shame cave?
You what, now?
I was really thrown off when I first heard this one. I feel like it was within the couple of years. I’m not sure, though. I’m an old, too… well, middle.
“Goon” was originally one of a group of weirdos who were antagonists on the old black and white Fleischer Studio’s “Popeye” cartoons.
Goon still means what you think it means. If you used it in that context, almost anyone would understand. Your guy at work is just somewhere near the bottom of the bell curve. It’s not even a noun in the newer usage. It’s a verb. One who goons would be a gooner, not a goon.
I was excited to discover an archive of The Goon Show, but it turned out to be old British men doing silly voices.
JK, I listened to that years ago.
boy my surprise when i was talking about gooning with someone and they sent me a link. i thought we were gonna cam up and look tough he was cocked and loaded full frontal i almost passed out.
About the same time “cornhole” became the name of a game
Oh thank you! You’ve saved me from a Google search. Saw a video thumbnail on YT, that said someone had goosed to death. I didn’t know wtf that meant, but also thought not to Google 😅
Ikr, I remembered goon as those baddies you beat up in Lego Batman from PS2
(Knocking on door)
Homer: “Who’s there?”
Goons: “Goons.”
Homer: “Goons?”
Goons: “Hired Goons.”
Homer: “Hired Goons?”
There is actually some overlap of the meanings that explains the change.
If you were to distinguish goon from similar words like “mobster” or “henchman” or “lacky” what would you say is the key characteristic of a goon?
Goons are stupid, they barely have two brain cells to rub together. They are simpletons.
Gooning is not actually masturbation in the sense you are thinking of it.
It’s a mental state you enter when practicing edging and watching porn. Edging is the act of bringing yourself to the edge of orgasm and stopping it at the last moment, making you want to orgasm even more building on to your desire for sexual release. Eventually you become so consumed with this desire, so horny that your brain basically stops working, all it can think about is sex sex sex. This is when you have “goon” brain. That’s “gooning”.
Old guy from New Zealand, and a ‘goon’ was a hilariously silly person from the old english radio show ‘the Goon Show’, Spike Milligan, Peter Sellars, and Harry Secombe etc.
About 2 years ago I think. Funny how language changes 😀
I thought gooning over someone just meant being a really big fan. Like a Stan. I’ve been missing a lot of context…
I still don’t understand what “goon”s new meaning is. Came across a few usages which were different from each other. What does “goon” and “gooner” mean?
Goon in Australia has always meant cheap boxed wine lol.
It still means that. You may be confusing the noun goon with the slang verb to goon.
Back in the 2000s I used to frequent a forum and we called ourselves goons. When I went off to college we had a goon meetup. It involved playing board games.
It hasn’t changed. Watch:
“Trump and his goons are ruining everything”.
Isn’t goon cask wine?
When Gen Alpha invented brain rot and now we be skibidi rizzin’ no cap.
I don’t even use it as the new intended term. I use it to mean “coomer” or porn addict.
I’d say about 4 – 5 years ago. Speaking as a young guy.
Around the time the Skibidi Toilet lexicon started overwriting gen A’s entire vocabulary. Although I’ll admit I’ve seen a few skits using it ironically that were genuinely hilarious.
You rang?
Im a goon sometimes but I don’t go around and goon or whatever that means
I’m 35 and this is news to me. Tbf, I live under a rock.
Goonie Goo Goo! What the F**K does that mean Gus? Is your wife Bigfoot?
Here in the UK, we have all football club who’s nickname is ‘The Gooners’.
A couple of years ago, I referred to a friend of mine as a “Gooner”, and our Gen Z son (who doesn’t follow football at all) literally spat his tea out.
Cue one awkward conversation, because I had never heard the modern meaning of ‘Gooner’ before.
Back in the day users of the Something Awful forums were called Goons.
If we really want to play the “damn kids changing the language” card here, the word “Goon” was also applied to German guards (particularly POW guards) during WWII (still drawing on the “stupid/clueless” connotations) and which inspired the naming for the iconic 1950s British comedy series The Goon Show.
And has several people have also noted, it also refers to cheap cask wine in Australia.
Goon means different things. I either think of it as a hired henchman thug, or a fifties radio show.
I literally call my kids goons – it’s just a silly little name to call them. I hope it doesn’t mean anything more 😕
Oh no! Not the Goonies!
One of my preferred silly threats, “don’t make me send the goons after you” really takes on an even darker tone now
I don’t know, and I don’t like it.
Wait. Are you saying it doesn’t mean low-intelligence enforcer? I.e., “He sent his goons to rough me up.”
I see you’ve played knifey spooney before.
Now THIS is a goon bag (in a box).
Personally I lost track when simp stopped meaning “simpleton.”
There’s still like a divide between the two goons. If I call someone a gooner then you know what I mean but if I said “go with your goons” then you know what I mean.
I’m gonna chalk it up to Titan AE.
It’s been a slang term going around since 2021. It’s a Gen Alpha thing. Goon these days would just be Henchman. But if you have the 1930s mafia context, goon still works.
What…what does it mean now?
When it started meaning goon
I couldn’t tell you specifics without going to Urban Dictionary or Know Your Meme, but here’s the gist. Once upon a time, the term for someone who would…self pleasure a lot was called a coomer. Coom, cum, you get the picture. At some point, coomer turned to gooner.
I think that term is relatively new.
We older Aussies refer to cheap cask/box wine as goon bags.
I’m aware of the term “goon” meaning what you know it as, and of the word “gooner” being the one associated with new slang. Like most things though, it probably got shortened and now they are the same word meaning two completely different things.