gony Now dial.
(ˈgəʊnɪ)
Also 6, 9 gonny, 9 goney, gooney.
[Of obscure formation; see gawney, and cf. Sc. gonyel a stupid fellow.]
1. A booby, a simpleton.
| c 1580 J. Jeffere Bugbears iii. i. in Archiv Stud. d. neu. Spr. (1897), & yet the gray-beard gonnie daunceth, praunceth, & skippeth friskoioly. 1804 R. Anderson Cumberld. Ball. 116 She dance! what she turns in her taes, thou peer gonny. 1837–40 Haliburton Clockm. (1862) 139 That are Sheriff was a goney—don't cut your cloth arter his pattern. 1883 Millionaire i. xix, I should like to go to one of those meetings, and watch the gonies, sitting with open mouths listening to Bounce. |
2. A sailor's name for the albatross and some other birds resembling it.
| 1839 Knickerbocker XIII. 386 May the ‘Goneys’ eat me, if he [sc. the whale] dodges us this time. 1850 Scoresby Cheever's Whalem. Adv. iii. (1859) 40 Gonies, stinkards, horse-birds..had all many a good morsel of blubber. 1851 H. Melville Whale xlii. 210 Sometime after I learned that goney was some seaman's name for albatross. 1895 Westm. Gaz. 14 Jan. 2/3 A goonie (a sea⁓bird..second only in size to the albatross). 1957 W. L. McAtee Folk Names Canad. Birds 3 Black-footed Albatross. Gony, gony bird, goony (B.C.); goony bird (North Pacific). These names appear to have the significance of booby or dullard and probably are applied to any albatross. 1966 R. Ardrey Territorial Imperative (1967) iv. 148 The albatross..became known to all the American fleet as the gooney bird. |