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Definition
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variants
or less commonly looney
loonier; looniest
looniness
noun
loony
noun
plural loonies
Synonyms
- absurd
- asinine
- balmy
- brainless
- bubbleheaded
- cockeyed
- crackpot
- crazy
- cuckoo
- daffy
- daft
- dippy
- dotty
- fatuous
- featherheaded
- fool
- foolish
- half-baked
- half-witted
- harebrained
- inept
- insane
- jerky
- kooky
- kookie
- lunatic
- lunkheaded
- mad
- nonsensical
- nutty
- preposterous
- sappy
- screwball
- senseless
- silly
- simpleminded
- stupid
- tomfool
- unwise
- wacky
- whacky
- weak-minded
- witless
- zany
Examples of loony in a Sentence
Every family includes someone who's a little loony.
that's got to be the looniest idea I've ever heard
Recent Examples on the Web
The choice of Offenbach’s loony comedy about a pair of starving Peruvian artists and their manipulation by a powerful philandering viceroy was the recommendation of mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard — who sings the title role with disarming comedic chops to rival her formidable pipes.
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Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post, 21 Mar. 2024
As an impressionist, Carvey's style was more, well, impressionist — his gabbling, discursive George H.W. Bush spinning out further and further while remaining resolutely tethered to some measure of loony reality.
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Dennis Perkins, EW.com, 14 Dec. 2023
These people believe the world is full of bad information — biased news, out-of-touch punditry, loony conspiracy theories.
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Kevin Roose, New York Times, 8 Oct. 2023
One was prepared to look past Rodgers’s loony anti-vax views, his U.F.O. hysterias—and for that matter past the Jets owner Woody Johnson’s Trumpite leanings—in preparation for this season of hope, and then . .
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Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 12 Sep. 2023
Accompanied by their parents, these hypernerdy whiz kids are rousingly welcomed by the event’s emcee, a five-star general played impeccably by Jeffrey Wright, whose rigorous diction is the loony height of military officialese.
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Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 15 June 2023
The first commercial space shuttle sends loony Ted and his former girlfriend on a trip to the moon.
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Ed Stockly, Los Angeles Times, 9 Apr. 2021
And a seriously long staircase with a loony payoff leading to the Sacré Coeur Basilica at dawn.
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Jen Yamato, Los Angeles Times, 24 Mar. 2023
Then there’s the loony cake.
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Vulture, 10 Apr. 2023
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'loony.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Etymology
by shortening & alteration from lunatic
First Known Use
1841, in the meaning defined above
Phrases Containing loony
Dictionary Entries Near loony
Cite this Entry
“Loony.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/loony. Accessed 10 Jun. 2024.
Kids Definition
loony
adjective
loo·ny
variants
also looney
loonier; looniest
: very foolish or eccentric
looniness
noun
loony
noun
Etymology
an altered form of lunatic (adjective)
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