Goon literally started out as the big nosed henchmen of the sea hag in the Popeye comic strip in the 1930s. It got applied to refer to anti-union fighters very quickly before it became a general purpose word meaning low-level henchman.
What's funny about revenge of the nerds is that no one on set, even the girls, thought anything of that plot point at all at the time. It wasn't until the 2010s that the backlash against it for that scene became a major sticking point.
Not to say it was ever acceptable to impersonate someone else to have sex with a girl. That is rape by deception, but movies did have different standards at the time. For example a lot of movies had scenes were children were put in fairly awkward situations that would be scandalous today but at that time the whole 'children pretending to be adults' wasn't seen as a big deal.
The nostalgia critic in his review of The Chipmunks movie (the 80s one) did bring up that point to explain the mentality behind those scenes at the time.
There are old reviews calling that scene out when the movie was new.
edit: I'm looking for the review, but there's so many modern reviews, that finding a scanned new paper article from 1984 is difficult.
Another example of people knowing Revenge of the Nerds ain't right was Real Genius. The creative crew was hired by the studio to make their own Revenge of the Nerds, but they hated that movie and made a fixed version.
There's some interview with the director of Revenge of the Nerds who defended the rapist as a "complex character." Utter nonsense. The real concern with all this how obviously fine Hollywood was and still is with rape. What they considered normal seeped into the media they produced and normalized it to the masses watching it.
On Goonies, the name is fine and isn't problematic. I saw Inside Job take a swipe at it for how they treated Sloth, but he was sympathetic and his abusers were his family, the villains. The two things that don't age too well the was the Japanese People Love Gadgets, which considering it was only the one kid and his father, isn't that bad. It's pretty reasonable for a son to have the same hobby as his father and tech otakus are a thing. The second is the body shaming the Chunk character, which when recording the scene, made the director so uncomfortable, he paid for a gym membership for the kid. There's a lot worse movies from the 80s to watch.
And there was a time that gay meant happy and a removed was a piece of fire wood. Though the Brits, in their usual word butchery, turned that into fag for cigarette.
Languages change and morph. They are living things. And despite the French's best effort to try and prevent it.
You butchered your own word removed to get fag. And who eats veg? And soccer that the US gets blamed for. We got it from you! Mangling words is what Brits do because they are orally lazy!
*****For those without a sense of humor, this is meant in fun.
So lazy and yet wanting to be respected. Oh we don't eat cows. That's for the poors, we eat beef.
Bunch of fuckin tea sippin wankers. But for the brits sake, words ending in re instead of er does look better to me. Theatre over theater. Colour is more colorful of a spelling...
Regarding the gays, didn't they use to burn gay people which is why the term connected from bundle of sticks to gay people? And probably why we use flamer as well, now that I think about it.
We raise cows. We eat beef even if we are poor, we don't discriminate. Well, up until the prices these days. It's going back to being a rich person's supper. Much to the joy of Vegans. But even cow is better than beouf or it's variations.
re vs. er? bloody silent letters again. Colour looks like a wannabe upjump word. And there is the whole silent letter thing again.
Those crude heathens probably hanged them the majority of the time vs burn. Wood costs money and takes time. A rope is cheap and faster plus it's reusable and fits their attitude.
It is crazy how words change meaning. Surprising that low level mafia muscle was a Goon and now it somehow relates to the euphoria one experiences eating Fast Food Chinese crab rangoons.
While I love going at a china buffet as much as the next fella - I don't understand how it became associated with mob henchmen.
In fairness to memes, that definition is still largely true, its just that the common usage tends to refer to this specific form of meme. Like with squares and rectangles, not all anthropological memes are image macros, but all image macro memes are a subset of anthropological memes
I recommend Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. It's a pretty influential work of early science fiction.
Mind you, it's been like 30 years since I read any Heinlein. Not sure I'd feel the same way about his stuff now as late teen me did, but the many books of his I read definitely shaped a lot of my philosophy.
LOL. That's great. Yeah, it really doesn't hold up. I think a lot of my enjoyment of Heinlein came from being a horny teen with a Christian upbringing seeing a different take on sexuality. Stranger in a Strange Land was one of the last of his I read and not my favourite. The Number of The Beast was the first one of his I read.
Edit: Apparently I watched that video 6 years ago and left a comment. I've been a subscriber to that channel for a while.
Yeah no sorry the origin was always gross. Stranger in a strange land is just heinlein's weird fetish porn where he justifies old men sleeping with young girls (sound familiar?)
And grok was always a term used by weirdos who thought the book was deep for some crazy reason and wanted to sound like they were part of this insider intellectuals club
What? He gets freaky in some other books, but Stranger is pretty clean for a free love manifesto. Every character I can think of was a full grown adult, I don't think there's a single scene even euphemistically depicting an old man sleeping with a young girl. All the sex even referred to was between people of relatively close age.
Grok just means to understand/drink fully. You drink water, and it becomes a part of your body. You understand an idea, and it becomes part of your mind. It's an efficient word to communicate "understanding something fully enough to functionally incorporate it into your worldview". It's not that intellectual.
Please don't interpret this as a defense of Robert Heinlein's books as it has been decades since I read them and it sounds like you might be more familiar with them. But weren't all the women in Stranger in a Strange Land older than Michael Valentine Smith?
Are you confusing the character with Lazarus Long from Time Enough for Love, et al? I think he was thousands of years older than some of his (adult) love interests...
That's a rather puritan and skewed perspective. Afaik Stranger in a Strange Land is a very weird book but very tame and not pornographic at all. And it was an important artwork that explored the themes of the 60s sexual revolution. A time where people knew very little about sex and gender and questioned everything.
I dunno. I only ever used it as shorthand for being able to understand the basics of something. Also, words can change for the better. So in this case it went gross -> fine -> gross.
Yeah, you did hire goons, but you wanted gooners...
And who is that to right one supposed to be? How is a maffia boss some dude with what looks like an assassin cloak with "Evil" written on it?
There was a proof of concept trailer (which looked great - with Clancy brown and Paul giamati doing voices) and a kickstarter to make a storyboard back in 2012. Then in 2022 supposedly Netflix picked it up, but it haven't heard anything since.
"They're never bringing me back. I'm not sure I'd like it either, they're going to make me... you know... not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just not me"
Perhaps not officially but i can see scholars eventually yielding to equate irony to mean satire.
I remember growing up when the word ultimate is used everywhere and being equated to "super duper". I later learned it ultimately (no pun intended) means final. I guess the same will happen to the word irony now also to mean satire.
Ironically (given the original name of this community), the ancient Chinese had entire discourses on the idea that in order for society to function correctly, people needed to be able to agree what words meant.
A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music will not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.
The established names of the later kings: penal and legal terms followed those of Shang, noble titles followed those of Zhou, literary titles followed those of Li. As for miscellaneous names applied to all things, they conformed to the established customs and conventions of Zhuxia; in distant regions with different local customs, these were adapted accordingly for general understanding.
As for miscellaneous names applied to people: the inherent nature that causes a person to be what he is called "xing." The harmony of xing gives rise to refined interactions and responsive 感应; when things occur effortlessly and naturally without deliberate action, this is called xing. The inclinations of xing—liking, disliking, joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness—are called qing. When the emotions arise and the mind makes choices in response, this is called lü (deliberation). When the mind deliberates and is thus able to act intentionally, this is called wei. When deliberation accumulates and becomes habitual, and only then achieves formation, it is called wei. Acting in accordance with what is righteous and beneficial is called shi (affairs or actions). Acting in accordance with righteousness is called xing (conduct or behavior). The capacity for knowledge within a person is called zhi. When knowledge aligns with something, it is called zhi (wisdom). The capacity for action within a person is called neng. When ability aligns with something, it is also called neng (capability). When xing is harmed, it is called bing (illness or affliction). A person's encounter with measured circumstances is called ming (fate or destiny): these are the miscellaneous names applied to people, and they represent the established terms of later kings.
Therefore, when a sovereign establishes names, once names are fixed and realities distinguished, the Way is put into practice and aspirations become clear; thus, he carefully leads the people toward unity. Therefore, to split words and arbitrarily create names in order to confuse established terms, causing the people to be doubtful and leading to frequent disputes among them, is called a great jian (great villain or great wrongdoer). Their crime is still akin to that of falsifying tokens, seals, and measurements. Therefore, the people dare not fabricate strange words to confuse established names; thus, their people are sincere and upright. Sincerity makes them easy to lead, and being easy to lead leads to public harmony. The people dare not fabricate strange terms to confuse established names, so they remain unified in the Way and law, and are careful to follow commands. If this is done, then their legacy will be enduring. An enduring legacy and accomplished achievements represent the highest attainment of governance. This is the achievement of carefully upholding the conventions of names. Now that the sage kings have passed away, the guardianship of names has become lax; strange terms arise, and the correspondence between names and realities becomes confused. When the forms of right and wrong are unclear, even those officials who uphold the law and Confucian scholars who recite canonical texts also fall into disorder. If a sovereign were to arise, he would surely follow established names while also creating new ones as needed. Therefore, the reasons for having names, the basis on which things are deemed the same or different, and the essential principles of establishing names must not be overlooked.
I find it interesting how obsessed the Chinese are with the quality of Chinese spoken someone speaks and also how people who can pun super hard are absolutely hilarious.
I wonder if it's because the Chinese language (and I'm assuming we're talking about Mandarin because there are many Chinese languages) is tonal based. The same word could mean differently based on the pronunciation so there are people who could be stickler for rules.
Yeah the prescriptivism vs descriptivism debate still rages in linguistics. The prescriptivists have been losing for decades but arguments still abound in the academics.
And just because "goon" has changed meanings doesn't mean we don't lean on some prescriptivism. We still agree on singular definitions for lots of words (or at least contextual definitions for words with lots of different meanings).
The euphemism treadmill is particularly annoying in psychiatry. People keep using useful diagnostic labels as mean names for people they don't like then in an attempt to be respectful of the people we serve we use a different diagnostic label but then everybody has to learn and start using the new diagnostic label and by the time it reaches saturation it's already an insult again.
People keep on using "glaze" to mean to excessively praise somebody, but I'm pretty sure it means to give a wet sloppy blowjob, so it's pretty weird hearing it used otherwise.
No glazing is what you do to their face after they've given you a wet sloppy blowjob. Thats where it gets its more conversational definition of showing excessive praise to someone.
Yeah, and flexing.. At least in my language they try to use it as "showing off".. Well, kinda, I guess it can be showing off to show much can fit up your ass.
Actually that guy is more wrong than you were. "Gooning" is the act of edging multiple times in a single long session such that your body is pumped so full of sexual endorphins that you essentially become an accessory to your groin. No longer a person with a penis, but simply a rock hard cock with a human attached to it who's sole purpose is providing sexual gratification. This is the "goon state". The term "gooning" does derive from its previous usage as the gooner becomes a simpleton, brainless idiot, etc.
Gooners typically also use multiple screens in a dark room with their porn of choice on each screen to maximize sexual stimulation, essentially entering into their own pocket dimension where there exists only porn and their throbbing shaft.
Source: Me. I once hit the ceiling with my load after a 5 hour goon session.
It means all the above shit in this thread including the one that started it. Words can have more than one meaning. I think the argument is what the connotation has become.
My then girlfriend used to buy flagoons of sauterne. Difficult to drink with the sweetness but for that I could see she was a great lady and didn’t let that put me off!
Ive got 4 definitions... Making it extra confusing.
The one from the post.
The new zoomer definition.
A member of the EvE Online alliance "Goonswarm Federation" (an army of 10k angry nerds).
A member of the security team at DefCon.
Both 3 and 4 predate 2 by well more than 15 years, this is one of those zoomer additions to the common lexicon I would prefer reverted to the old definitions.
One is a notorious guild in an online video game that has been around in some form or another since the early 2ks. The latter is a security conference thats been held since the early 90s. (Although it used to be a lot rougher than it currently is, its a lot more corporate and safer now)
the goonswarm is just the something awful faction of eve. they've been called goons since forever. they had one in wow as well, "ye olde goon squad", or yogs. some of those members started a podcast and that just snowballed.
I’ve been attending STLV which is at the Rio in Las Vegas. Past two years Defcon has been there. I guess attendees for that convention get labels. I see lots of people which patches that say they are goons.
196 replies
I still think of Goon as a hockey enforcer. As a Canadian, i'm obligated to.
"Gimme the good old days when a pair of boobs were a couple of dumb guys." - Sheriff Buford T. Justice
Edited to fix attribution. I was sure it was Dangerfield, but DDG says otherwise.
Boob or booby to mean stupid still lives on in boobytrap.
Sort of. Boobytrap comes from the seabird the blue-footed booby. A famously stupid seabird that sailors caught in such a trap.
-Norm MacDonald
I was never with 'it' and I never cared to be.
I have become the first to advocate for changes. We build the future, there is nothing in the past, the past does not exist.
With their hands & genitals out of frame, those two goons might actually be gooning.
As stupid as it was, "Fap," made sense.
Isn’t it an onomatopoeia? It’s based on the sound “fap fap fap”
😅 Yeah it is.
What's wrong with jackin' it?
Or jerkin' the gherkin 😀
Or crankin' the hog?
Goon literally started out as the big nosed henchmen of the sea hag in the Popeye comic strip in the 1930s. It got applied to refer to anti-union fighters very quickly before it became a general purpose word meaning low-level henchman.
Cool any way u seem hot , imma goon
Do you all remember the movie “The Goonies”? Yeah… so many levels of wrong with this new definition when applied to that movie
So don't apply it to that movie.
We really need to learn to not apply modern culture and standards backwards.
I dunno. Revenge Of The Nerds had that rape scene played for laughs.
What's funny about revenge of the nerds is that no one on set, even the girls, thought anything of that plot point at all at the time. It wasn't until the 2010s that the backlash against it for that scene became a major sticking point.
Not to say it was ever acceptable to impersonate someone else to have sex with a girl. That is rape by deception, but movies did have different standards at the time. For example a lot of movies had scenes were children were put in fairly awkward situations that would be scandalous today but at that time the whole 'children pretending to be adults' wasn't seen as a big deal.
The nostalgia critic in his review of The Chipmunks movie (the 80s one) did bring up that point to explain the mentality behind those scenes at the time.
There are old reviews calling that scene out when the movie was new.
edit: I'm looking for the review, but there's so many modern reviews, that finding a scanned new paper article from 1984 is difficult.
Another example of people knowing Revenge of the Nerds ain't right was Real Genius. The creative crew was hired by the studio to make their own Revenge of the Nerds, but they hated that movie and made a fixed version.
There's some interview with the director of Revenge of the Nerds who defended the rapist as a "complex character." Utter nonsense. The real concern with all this how obviously fine Hollywood was and still is with rape. What they considered normal seeped into the media they produced and normalized it to the masses watching it.
On Goonies, the name is fine and isn't problematic. I saw Inside Job take a swipe at it for how they treated Sloth, but he was sympathetic and his abusers were his family, the villains. The two things that don't age too well the was the Japanese People Love Gadgets, which considering it was only the one kid and his father, isn't that bad. It's pretty reasonable for a son to have the same hobby as his father and tech otakus are a thing. The second is the body shaming the Chunk character, which when recording the scene, made the director so uncomfortable, he paid for a gym membership for the kid. There's a lot worse movies from the 80s to watch.
And there was a time that gay meant happy and a removed was a piece of fire wood. Though the Brits, in their usual word butchery, turned that into fag for cigarette.
Languages change and morph. They are living things. And despite the French's best effort to try and prevent it.
Did you self-censor? It says "removed" in italics. I don't know what a piece of fire wood could be called to be so offensive to self-censor
A fagot is a bundle of sticks or firewood, pronounced the same as the slur.
fagot removed
just checking whether it shows up if i type it. all of [email protected]'s messages just say removed...
yep seems to work. maybe bluewings client
It shows as removed to me still. Maybe not for you. Maybe my instance is censoring it.
If I did, it was by accident.
We used it to mean cigarette before yanks turned it into a slur. You're the butchers here!
You butchered your own word removed to get fag. And who eats veg? And soccer that the US gets blamed for. We got it from you! Mangling words is what Brits do because they are orally lazy!
*****For those without a sense of humor, this is meant in fun.
So lazy and yet wanting to be respected. Oh we don't eat cows. That's for the poors, we eat beef.
Bunch of fuckin tea sippin wankers. But for the brits sake, words ending in re instead of er does look better to me. Theatre over theater. Colour is more colorful of a spelling...
Regarding the gays, didn't they use to burn gay people which is why the term connected from bundle of sticks to gay people? And probably why we use flamer as well, now that I think about it.
We raise cows. We eat beef even if we are poor, we don't discriminate. Well, up until the prices these days. It's going back to being a rich person's supper. Much to the joy of Vegans. But even cow is better than beouf or it's variations.
re vs. er? bloody silent letters again. Colour looks like a wannabe upjump word. And there is the whole silent letter thing again.
Those crude heathens probably hanged them the majority of the time vs burn. Wood costs money and takes time. A rope is cheap and faster plus it's reusable and fits their attitude.
F@g for cigarette is still used in the UK. So much so that the BBC once used it in the 2010s to refer to cigarettes in a news report.
That is true. Can't argue that. But isn't slowly fading away as generations pass?
makes languages sound kinda gay, all that morphing and changing.
next you'll be telling me they have formal versions and informal versions too
Why yes, yes they do. And they best part is, nobody knows why.
I would feel bad for arsenal supporters but they've always been a bunch of wankers.
Same
It is crazy how words change meaning. Surprising that low level mafia muscle was a Goon and now it somehow relates to the euphoria one experiences eating Fast Food Chinese crab rangoons.
While I love going at a china buffet as much as the next fella - I don't understand how it became associated with mob henchmen.
Australians think “rooting around” means something very different so you have to be careful not to use it in a work context.
??
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Root+Around
TIL
It’s not that one either
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/why-rooting-means-something-different-to-australian-ears-20250512-p5lye0.html
Yeah - I've never experienced that use of the term.
Me too. Thanks
I mean, it's not that off target.
Goons where low level mafia enforcers who came into your space unbidden and roughed you up or worse.
You saw those guys loitering around you knew they were up to no good.
And grok used to mean "understand", not "nazi shithead propaganda machine".
And meme used to refer to a unit of cultural information that spreads by imitation, not a funny picture on social media.
Memes are absolutely fascinating
In fairness to memes, that definition is still largely true, its just that the common usage tends to refer to this specific form of meme. Like with squares and rectangles, not all anthropological memes are image macros, but all image macro memes are a subset of anthropological memes
This feels like your boss saying you get a company car and then giving you a scale model of a car with the company logo on it.
It was one of my favorite words.
Such is life
From Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. I wonder if the estate could sue for damages.
We still have extortion
The X makes it cool 😎
(I see the Futurama reference didn't work sorry)
It’s only because someone else took the letter X and made it objectively uncool. What a shithead.
True. I forgot about that. Mostly because fuck Twitter and that guy anyway.
TIL grok is an actual word.
I recommend Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. It's a pretty influential work of early science fiction.
Mind you, it's been like 30 years since I read any Heinlein. Not sure I'd feel the same way about his stuff now as late teen me did, but the many books of his I read definitely shaped a lot of my philosophy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jAkplrZci0
LOL. That's great. Yeah, it really doesn't hold up. I think a lot of my enjoyment of Heinlein came from being a horny teen with a Christian upbringing seeing a different take on sexuality. Stranger in a Strange Land was one of the last of his I read and not my favourite. The Number of The Beast was the first one of his I read.
Edit: Apparently I watched that video 6 years ago and left a comment. I've been a subscriber to that channel for a while.
It's from Stranger In A Strange Land. Overly Sarcastic Productions has a great summary of that book on their channel
Yeah no sorry the origin was always gross. Stranger in a strange land is just heinlein's weird fetish porn where he justifies old men sleeping with young girls (sound familiar?)
And grok was always a term used by weirdos who thought the book was deep for some crazy reason and wanted to sound like they were part of this insider intellectuals club
What? He gets freaky in some other books, but Stranger is pretty clean for a free love manifesto. Every character I can think of was a full grown adult, I don't think there's a single scene even euphemistically depicting an old man sleeping with a young girl. All the sex even referred to was between people of relatively close age.
Grok just means to understand/drink fully. You drink water, and it becomes a part of your body. You understand an idea, and it becomes part of your mind. It's an efficient word to communicate "understanding something fully enough to functionally incorporate it into your worldview". It's not that intellectual.
Please don't interpret this as a defense of Robert Heinlein's books as it has been decades since I read them and it sounds like you might be more familiar with them. But weren't all the women in Stranger in a Strange Land older than Michael Valentine Smith?
Are you confusing the character with Lazarus Long from Time Enough for Love, et al? I think he was thousands of years older than some of his (adult) love interests...
That's a rather puritan and skewed perspective. Afaik Stranger in a Strange Land is a very weird book but very tame and not pornographic at all. And it was an important artwork that explored the themes of the 60s sexual revolution. A time where people knew very little about sex and gender and questioned everything.
I dunno. I only ever used it as shorthand for being able to understand the basics of something. Also, words can change for the better. So in this case it went
gross -> fine -> gross.Grok was also a support character in the game Paladins.
I'm going to keep using it as a verb. If people are dumb enough to assume I'm dumb enough to use xai, that's not my problem.
I used to be with it. Then they changed what it was.
Now what I'm with isn't it
Now what I'm with isn't 'it' anymore and what's 'it' seems weird and scary to me.
It'll happen to YOU!
No way man! I'm gonna keep rockin' forever...
Stop it! You're scaring me from 20 years ago!
Yeah, you did hire goons, but you wanted gooners... And who is that to right one supposed to be? How is a maffia boss some dude with what looks like an assassin cloak with "Evil" written on it?
You think you're annoyed?
The Goon by Eric Powell.
In a town full of zombies, degenerates, mad scientists, and assorted weirdos a two fisted thug runs things his way.
"a two fisted thug"
Ah yes, Johnny two fists.
it's a pulp fiction kinda thing.
no, not the film
Forget you ignorant bottle babies!
I'm reclaiming goon, two fisted and 'a dame with hair on her chest!'*
[* a compliment to Mrs. Nick Charles in 'The Thin Man.']
Master of gooning.
sigh this movie's never getting made, is it?
To be honest, I don't think every comic needs to be a movie.
And 'goon' was used for decades before it got it's latest meaning.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-visit-from-the-goon-squad-jennifer-egan/fcd66a7ef19631b1
There was a proof of concept trailer (which looked great - with Clancy brown and Paul giamati doing voices) and a kickstarter to make a storyboard back in 2012. Then in 2022 supposedly Netflix picked it up, but it haven't heard anything since.
Similarly...
https://youtu.be/i4tNuM9XttM
They could have made a Popeye movie and chose not to.
We already got a Popeye movie, and we don't need to make another.
Are they still making feature length porn parodies?
"They're never bringing me back. I'm not sure I'd like it either, they're going to make me... you know... not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just not me"
The Gay GhostThe GoonThe Goonies would never work in these times. Kinda glad I grew up when I did.
It could work as an adult film
I'll bet a dollar it already is.
I mean, the pirate’s named One-Eyed Willy for cryin out loud
Spike Milligan used it as meaning idiots/simpletons but says he first new the word from Alice the Goon
I miss when gay means happy.
Okay I'm not that old but i had a boss who said he's old enough to remember when gay literally means happy.
For me, my little pet peeve is when society changed the meaning of ironic to mean joking or satirical.
I would argue irony is PART of satire, not irony is satire.
I agree, but also I just really like Sheevposting.
Relevant sketch from A Bit of Fry & Laurie from ~30 years ago.
https://youtu.be/O7tiIWIm8Ys?is=y0Wce8FHqhMKE4Gx
Did they 'literally' changed it?
Perhaps not officially but i can see scholars eventually yielding to equate irony to mean satire.
I remember growing up when the word ultimate is used everywhere and being equated to "super duper". I later learned it ultimately (no pun intended) means final. I guess the same will happen to the word irony now also to mean satire.
That's literally insane
I can't believe you'd use the word like this!
Ironically (given the original name of this community), the ancient Chinese had entire discourses on the idea that in order for society to function correctly, people needed to be able to agree what words meant.
--Master Kong (AKA Confucius)
https://ctext.org/analects/zi-lu
--Master Xun
https://ctext.org/xunzi/zheng-ming
Of course, there are also plenty of modern examples of how unclear communication can cause catastrophe.
I find it interesting how obsessed the Chinese are with the quality of Chinese spoken someone speaks and also how people who can pun super hard are absolutely hilarious.
I wonder if it's because the Chinese language (and I'm assuming we're talking about Mandarin because there are many Chinese languages) is tonal based. The same word could mean differently based on the pronunciation so there are people who could be stickler for rules.
Yeah the prescriptivism vs descriptivism debate still rages in linguistics. The prescriptivists have been losing for decades but arguments still abound in the academics.
And just because "goon" has changed meanings doesn't mean we don't lean on some prescriptivism. We still agree on singular definitions for lots of words (or at least contextual definitions for words with lots of different meanings).
The euphemism treadmill is particularly annoying in psychiatry. People keep using useful diagnostic labels as mean names for people they don't like then in an attempt to be respectful of the people we serve we use a different diagnostic label but then everybody has to learn and start using the new diagnostic label and by the time it reaches saturation it's already an insult again.
It's a psy-op to protect the goons that are detaining innocents on American streets.
goon ≠ gooner
schooner and scone are two different things two. sound similar though
confusing them is very bad.
Goon > gooner
They aren't mutually exclusive, goons can goon.
Is a goon gooning still a goon or have they become a gooner
They aren't mutually exclusive. They can be both.
Gives all new meaning to David Bowie's song Fashion.
Or he's just a time traveler and knew exactly what he was doing...
Or he was David Bowie and was fucking weird
I actually lol'd
'Goon' still means Henchman.
Don't let the vapid famewhore influencerati dictate language changes. Laugh at their obvious inability and keep being you.
I guess we can still use 'mooks' for that.
Bro thought he mogged. Bro typed this and thought, "ts tuff".
Bro's on the Canadian instance and doesn't even know "goon" is a hockey term in Canada.
(this is me showing my "obvious inability"...whatever that means)
Wtf are you talking about? Also, language is a social construct and words change meaning all the time. They can also mean more than one thing...
Hogwash! (I meant that as in I agree)
Are you trying to dictate language changes? I laugh at your obvious inability
What does it mean now? This is the only definition I know.
Masturbate
Ahh.. Its the new 'baitin
go away. baitin'.
People keep on using "glaze" to mean to excessively praise somebody, but I'm pretty sure it means to give a wet sloppy blowjob, so it's pretty weird hearing it used otherwise.
No glazing is what you do to their face after they've given you a wet sloppy blowjob. Thats where it gets its more conversational definition of showing excessive praise to someone.
I thought it was what you do to donuts..
Its derived from that yes
YES!! My wife was talking to our kids about glazing someone - I almost had a heart attack! They all knew the new term, I only knew the older!
Yeah, and flexing.. At least in my language they try to use it as "showing off".. Well, kinda, I guess it can be showing off to show much can fit up your ass.
As a Gen-Xer I can attest that up until two weeks ago I was very much so misunderstanding "gooning". Once again, porn saves the day.
Does it tho?
What does it mean now?
From what I gather, it seems to mean something similar to what we civilized folk once called edging
I'm pretty sure that gooning doesn't refer to edging but simply to masturbaiting to completion, often multiple times a day
So... Normal behaviour?
Oh. Well then I stand corrected. Shows you how much I know about it...
Actually that guy is more wrong than you were. "Gooning" is the act of edging multiple times in a single long session such that your body is pumped so full of sexual endorphins that you essentially become an accessory to your groin. No longer a person with a penis, but simply a rock hard cock with a human attached to it who's sole purpose is providing sexual gratification. This is the "goon state". The term "gooning" does derive from its previous usage as the gooner becomes a simpleton, brainless idiot, etc.
Gooners typically also use multiple screens in a dark room with their porn of choice on each screen to maximize sexual stimulation, essentially entering into their own pocket dimension where there exists only porn and their throbbing shaft.
Source: Me. I once hit the ceiling with my load after a 5 hour goon session.
You heard it here, folks, straight from the horse's mouth
Like landscaping?
That’s part of it for some people.
Hmmm. Sure.
Thats what edging is for me. Still not sure what this new definition is.
It means all the above shit in this thread including the one that started it. Words can have more than one meaning. I think the argument is what the connotation has become.
For real, why can't these people just make up their own words?
They're just not bumpenis enough
what a bunch of saltydongs
Truly unpruliferus people
Buncha Croffans.
Oh but they do!
I occasionally throw it in like that to keep things fun at work.
If they don't deliver the server I think we should send hired goons over.
Don't worry, just send that to the goons in implementation.
Ahh when goon was short for flagon or flagoon! Cheap wine was the go!
Goon bag.
My then girlfriend used to buy flagoons of sauterne. Difficult to drink with the sweetness but for that I could see she was a great lady and didn’t let that put me off!
The Goonies should own that word
Ive got 4 definitions... Making it extra confusing.
Both 3 and 4 predate 2 by well more than 15 years, this is one of those zoomer additions to the common lexicon I would prefer reverted to the old definitions.
Aren't 3 and 4 just derivatives of 1?
Eh... No
One is a notorious guild in an online video game that has been around in some form or another since the early 2ks. The latter is a security conference thats been held since the early 90s. (Although it used to be a lot rougher than it currently is, its a lot more corporate and safer now)
Both are obviously named after the crinimal goons.
Was it not just an collaboration of SomethingAwful forumites that founded Goonswarm?
Where do you think the something awful form got the name?
the goonswarm is just the something awful faction of eve. they've been called goons since forever. they had one in wow as well, "ye olde goon squad", or yogs. some of those members started a podcast and that just snowballed.
It will always mean bags of wine to me
I hate having to explain "goon of fortune" now...
Or Sean William Scott.
Yup, “Goon” will always mean hockey enforcer to me. If they want a name for jacking it, that would be “Goon 2”
The Last Enforcer
What if they used jacking off? Or something like beating it? I bet there's a hundred ways to flog the dolphin.
what's a goon to a Goblin?
Depends on what he's goblin.
Gooning gooner gooning goons
Go on
Goon means wine in a bag.
I'm also pretty amused my the new meaning though. Eg. When Keir Starmer elated himself a gooner.
I’ve been attending STLV which is at the Rio in Las Vegas. Past two years Defcon has been there. I guess attendees for that convention get labels. I see lots of people which patches that say they are goons.
We've got a town in NZ called Rangiora, but it's pretty ubiquitously known as "Goon" to locals.
My theory is "Rangiora" -> "Rangoon" -> "Goon".
We also call the inner bag removed from boxed wine a "goon sack", though that one is borrowed from the Aussies.
I like gooning for the family
I miss when people correctly capitalised the word I
| It kinda looks like you put your sentence between vertical bars |
I did kind of do that, didn't I
That's a type of punctuation in Hindi
when was that precisely?
It was a time long ago, before social media was a thing, and when people learned how to spell by reading books.
20 new words a year from people that barely read books. No wonder they think they are inventing lingo.
Literally
How do you feel about Stifler being the main actor in a franchise called Goon?
Not exactly news that words often change meanings over time.
Hired goons?