loony, a. and n. colloq.
(ˈluːnɪ)
Also looney, luny.
[Shortened form of lunatic + -y.]
A. adj.
1. Lunatic, crazed, daft, dazed, demented, foolish, silly.
| 1872 B. Harte Heiress of Red Dog (1879) 93 You're that looney sort of chap that lives over yonder, ain't ye? 1883 E. C. Mann Psychol. Med. 424 (Cent.) His fits were nocturnal, and he had frequent ‘luny spells’ as he called them. 1900 F. T. Bullen With Christ at Sea xiii. 253, I sh'd a ben fair loony long ago. |
2. Pol. Of (the members of) a political faction or tendency: unacceptably radical; extremist, fanatical. Esp. as loony left and derivs. Cf. hard a. 12 d and lunatic fringe s.v. lunatic n. 1 c.
| 1977 Economist 2 Apr. (Survey) 22/1 The views of the loony left are well known in the democratic world. 1983 N.Y. Times 29 July a4/6 A military analyst here attributed the change in policy to ‘a loony, fringe group’. 1985 N.Y. Times Mag. 24 Feb. 28/5 ‘Red Dawn’, described widely as of the loony-right and paranoid, was not a very good movie. 1985 Economist 16 Nov. 41/3 It could be a picture of complacency, corruption, cronyism, loony-leftism or all four. 1987 City Limits 19 Feb. 6 The press has branded Deirdre Wood a ‘loony lefty’. |
B. n.
1. A lunatic.
| 1884 St. James's Gaz. 29 Mar. 6/2 An excellent system whereby one loony was brought to bear upon another. 1897 Kipling Capt. Cour. 27 Dad sez loonies can't shake out a straight yarn. |
2. loony bin [bin n. 7], a facetious term for a mental hospital; also fig. and ellipt.; loony-doctor slang, a doctor who treats mental illnesses, a psychiatrist.
| 1919 Wodehouse My Man Jeeves 195 If you're absolutely off your rocker, but don't find it convenient to be scooped into a luny-bin, you simply explain..it was just your Artistic Temperament. 1921 ― Indiscretions of Archie xxv. 303 Nine out of ten of them had views on Art which would have admitted them to any looney-bin, and no questions asked. 1938 J. Phelan Lifer xix. 201 Left him behind us there, we did, stone balmy. Finished in a loony. 1942 N. Streatfeild I ordered Table for Six 216 Mrs. Framley must have thought him fit for a looney bin. 1959 New Statesman 28 Mar. 434/3 In short, I do not want men to live for ever in a sort of global loony-bin. 1962 J. Symonds Bezill 68 Yes, Aunt Marion. She's locked up, you know, in the looney bin. 1974 Times 9 Feb. 10/4 (heading) In the looney bin. |
| 1925 Wodehouse Carry on, Jeeves! vi. 139 Old Sir Roderick, who's a loony-doctor and nothing but a loony-doctor, however much you may call him a nerve-specialist. 1936 Bentley & Allen Trent's Own Case iv. 39 ‘Once, I remember, he said that the worst of these loony-doctors―.’ ‘Did he say {oqq}loony-doctors{cqq}?’ 1960 Wodehouse Jeeves in Offing ii. 18 She's browsing with Sir Roderick Glossop, the loony-doctor. |