(plenty of raunchy sex talk, not for kids or the sexually modest)
(#1) That’s gooner ‘someone who masturbates a lot, enthusiastically’ — one of a family of senses for this noun — and it’s a fair cop (on the song, see the footnote at the end of this posting)
But that’s not how I got wrapped up in goonerology (and what Mickey Dolenz sang in 1966 — back in pre-gooner days — was, of course, I’m a believer). That I blame on the Peachy Kings 30%-off Memorial Day sale on (100% polyester) mesh football jerseys with sexual or sexualized identity labels on them, among them:
(#2) At $40 a pop; the labels include GOOD BOY [Boy for Daddy], EVIL GAY, TRASH [‘slut’], STUD, HO HO HO [with ho(e) ‘slut’ (etymologically ‘whore’)], PORN STAR, DEMON TWINK, WOOF, SIR — and, as above, GOONER
Now, it turns out that a sexual verb goon, agent noun gooner, and activity noun gooning are all, according to Merriam-Webster online, recently coined (with goon‘s first known uses from about 2005). As is common with recent coinages, especially of markedly slangy or taboo nature, these items are highly variable in their reference (people play with them), taking in a range of uses — in this case, at least 5 distinguishable uses, all having to do, in some way or another, with masturbation. The result is that I have no idea of what a guy would intend to convey by wearing the shirt in #2. (I am a gooner-3 and gooner-4, definitely not a gooner-1 or gooner-5, and will disavow gooner-2.)
The five senses. To simplify this discussion and to distance the topic a bit, I’ll replace the trisyllabic technical verb masturbate by the monosyllabic (and euphemistic but still vivid) everyday verb stroke. I take off from the Merriam-Webster Online’s entry:
verb goon: vulgar slang masturbate, especially: to masturbate for a prolonged period of time without orgasm in order to maintain a state of arousal [that is, masturbation with edging; first known use, circa 2005]
This is 1 hard-core stroking: stroking + edging.
Then this sequence of senses:
2 excessive or obsessive stroking, esp. as linked to compulsive use of pornography — for some understanding of excessive / obsessive / compulsive [first uses of gooning-2 around 2012]
3 frequent, enthusiastic stroking
4 stroking, period
5 stroking viewed as wasteful, unproductive, worthless, foolish, stupid: deprecated stroking
When we get to sense 5, gooner has evolved into a generalized insult, like AmE jack-off and BrE wanker.
The prehistory. Before we had sexual goon, gooner, and gooning, there were two families of goon words: deprecative and thuggish. From NOAD:
noun goon-1: informal 1 a stupid, foolish, or eccentric person: I don’t want to deal with Jack today, he’s such a goon. 2 mainly North American a violent, aggressive person who is hired to intimidate or harm people: he hired goons to hunt down supporters. … ORIGIN mid 19th century [details uncertain]
And from GDoS:
noun goon-1: 1 (also goony) a stolid, stupid person [1st cite 1909, marked as Cape Cod dialect] … 2 a thug [1st cite 1947]
GDoS supplies further items related to deprecative goon:
noun goonhead: (US) a fool [1st cite 1981]
noun gooney: 1 (US) (also goony) a fool, an idiot [1st cite 1904, marked as Cape Cod dialect]
noun goony bird (also goonie bird) (US teen) a fool, an eccentric [1st cite 1956]
In any case, the deprecative noun goon seems to have provided the basis for the stroke verb goon: stroking as an exemplarily foolish activity. Masturbation is devalued and derided through all the 5 senses.
Footnote. “Then I saw her face, now I’m a believer”. From the Monkees, “I’m a Believer”, released at the end of 1966. Sung by Micky Dolenz and written by Neil Diamond, it appeared on the second Monkees album, More of the Monkees. And was later covered by many others. It’s an anthem of love, with a Neil Dimond power tune. Addressed to a woman, but after Jacques literally swept me off my feet and told me he loved me, I changed the pronouns to the ones that fit my condition.
…..
June 9, 2026 at 10:07 am |
jack-off: and of course there’s the alternative jerk-off, which got shortened to jerk and has since lost its sexual implication (and the taboo level associated therewith).
June 9, 2026 at 3:38 pm |
Well, I gave sample parallels, not intending to provide an inventory of forms (So I didn’t give the alternatives jerk-off or jag-off.)
Then there’s the association many people make between jerk-off and the deprecative noun jerk. The history of this latter noun looks complex and not at all clearly a development from the former.