c1580 tr. Bugbears iii. i, in Archiv f. das Studium der Neueren Sprachen (1897) 99 & yet the gray-beard gonnie daunceth, praunceth, & skippeth friskoioly.

1804 R. Anderson et al. Ballads in Cumberland Dial. 116 She dance! what she turns in her taes, thou peer gonny.

1837–40 T. C. Haliburton Clockmaker (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.

1839 J. N. Reynolds in Knickerbocker May 386 May the ‘Goneys’ eat me, if he [sc. the whale] dodges us this time.

1850 H. T. Cheever Whale & his Captors iii. 59 Gonies, stinkards, horse-birds..had all many a good morsel of blubber.

1851 H. Melville Moby-Dick xlii. 210 Some time 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.