Go on

/ˈɡuːn/ · noun

Meaning

A thug; a usually muscular henchman with little intelligence..

Definitions by Sense

1. A thug; a usually muscular henchman with little intelligence.
2. (US, informal) A hired and paid person who is assigned to terrorize and kill opponents.
3. A fool; someone who is silly, stupid, awkward, or outlandish.
4. (ice hockey, derogatory) An enforcer or fighter.
5. (UK, World War II, PoW slang) A German guard in a prisoner-of-war camp.
6. (slang) One hired to legally kidnap a child and forcibly transport them to a boot camp, boarding school, wilderness therapy, or a similar rehabilitation facility.
7. (Australia, colloquial, uncountable) Box wine.
8. (Internet slang) A member of the comedy website Something Awful.

Example Sentences

Efforts to unionize were routinely met with clubbings, shootings, jailings, blacklistings and executions, perpetrated not only by well-armed legions of company goons, but also by police officers, deputies, National Guardsmen and even regular soldiers.

Mr. Campion appeared suitably impressed and she warmed to him. He was very easy to talk to with those long clown lines in his pale face, a natural goon, born rather too early she suspected.

Sending for the goon who sent for me / He's thinking he's hard, yeah, it's Little T

[…]a scout from the Flames came down from Saskatoon, said, "There's always room on our team for a goon"

Owen Jenney, Ms. Hamburger's son, got gooned, though he said his goons turned out to be "really nice guys, actually." He is 19 now, a freshman in college, and he remembers arriving in the wilderness frightened and confused, angrily convinced that sending him across the country to Oregon was "way out of proportion" to the situation.

Once a tap was designed in the 1970s goon climbed quickly to make up about 50 per cent of wine sales in Australia. In the days when restaurants sold "house wine", goon was known for being economical above anything else, and convenient, associated more with families on a budget and people on low incomes.

These first two steps were time-sensitive. Not only did goons need to beat Imgur's mid-May deadline but they also needed to account for the possibility that Imgur would treat the download as some kind of attack and throttle it — a possibility that, it turns out, never came to pass.

In the mid-week game against the Czech republic, the Czech team speared, slashed, tripped, gooned, and in more cases than I recall, crosschecked Canadian players in the teeth.

Synonyms for go on

Antonyms for go on

Related Words

Word Forms

• goons
• gooning
• gooned
• go'on
• go-on

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

Practice and Learn More

Frequently Asked Questions