goon

noun \ ˈgün \

Updated on: 1 Apr 2018

Definition of goon

1 : a stupid person

2 a : a man hired to terrorize or eliminate opponents

b : enforcer 2b

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Examples of goon in a Sentence

He was beat up by a couple of goons.
an unfortunate tendency to call those who disagree with him “brainless goons”

Recent Examples of goon from the Web

And the end of the season kind of sees a horrifying fruition for a character who's really put himself in a vulnerable space, and padded himself with his gang members and padded himself with a crew of bruisers and some goons.

— refinery29.com, "Riverdale Just Gave Us A Reason To Worry About Jughead," 28 Mar. 2018
That is how a wide-eyed goon-fest like Singles managed to be one of the coolest movies of 1992, despite its leads, Steve and Linda, being two overly earnest dildos.

— rebecca schuman, Longreads, "You’ve Reached the Winter of Our Discontent," 28 Mar. 2018
Ending a case that electrified punctuation pedants, grammar goons and comma connoisseurs, Oakhurst Dairy settled an overtime dispute with its drivers that hinged entirely on the lack of an Oxford comma in state law.

— daniel victor, New York Times, "Oxford Comma Dispute Is Settled as Maine Drivers Get $5 Million," 9 Feb. 2018
That obsession is both celebrated by purists and exploited by the evil corporation known as IOI, whose sinister leader is a fake gamer goon executive (Mendelsohn) bent on harnessing the commodification of the Oasis for profit.

— jen yamato, latimes.com, "Spielberg's 'Ready Player One' surprises and dazzles SXSW audience," 12 Mar. 2018
Although the musical originated fifteen years ago, there is no real historical space between the white-sheeted goons onstage and the horrors that went down in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year.

— steven strogatz, The New Yorker, "Musicals for Turbulent Times," 5 Mar. 2018
The goons of evil landowners have come to club the poor for stealing.

— josephine livingstone, The New Republic, "Karl Marx Has a Hangover," 2 Mar. 2018
Either of those ideas would ultimately probably be better than Hard Sun, which mashes up corrupt detectives with government goons trying to crack down on a hack that reveals the awful truth about a cataclysmic doomsday event.

— tim goodman, The Hollywood Reporter, "'Hard Sun': TV Review," 2 Mar. 2018
Not 20 years ago, Frum was writing books with geopolitical goon Richard Perle (An End To Evil), and on his own with titles like, The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush.

— charles p. pierce, Esquire, "Donald Trump Was the Inevitable Result of Republicanism," 25 Jan. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'goon.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.