1857 C. Kingsley Two Years Ago I. i. 10 John Briggs..neglected alike work and amusement for lazy mooning over books.

1859 G. Meredith Ordeal Richard Feverel I. xv. 233 Lady Blandish likewise hinted at his mooning propensities.

1882 L. Stephen Swift ix. 195 The knight used, it seems, to lose himself in metaphysical moonings.

1914 J. Joyce Dubliners 98 There'll be no mooning and spooning about it. I mean to marry money.

1931 D. B. Flanagan Dark Certainty i. 13 Unless She stopped her mooning..for someone who'd never come again The posies would scorn to bloom.

1993 Wired Sept. 106/1 I could not have raced to get my computer plugged in to receive and send our moonings of the last twenty-four hours.

2005 T. Ali in Y. Ono Mem. John Lennon 6 His lyrics had moved beyond matrimonial moonings. Love and happiness now became a feminist call for a new way of life.

1884 W. D. Howells Rise Silas Lapham ii, in Cent. Mag. Nov. 26/1 Her large eyes..were brown; they had the peculiar look of near-sighted eyes which is called mooning.

1898 Earl of Suffolk et al. Encycl. Sport II. 64 All the excitement of the expedition may be said..to lie in this ‘mooning’.

1903 Sci. Amer. Suppl. 24 Jan. 22629/2 ‘Mooning’ is performed with a round steel, shaped like a plate, and having the center cut out, and a handle placed across the opening.

1963 Look 27 Aug. 18 A game called mooning... This pastime originated about two years ago in southern California.

1974 Guardian 22 Mar. 17/8 Streaking..seems to be the mainly male equivalent of the mainly female practice that cropped up in campuses across the United States in the late fifties and early sixties. This was known as ‘mooning’... Mooning consisted..of exposing the bottom in the general direction of whoever the mooner wanted to impress, protest to, or affront.

1993 Times 31 Mar. 9/8 The women's antics are said to have included a mass scrummage, rugby tackles in the aisles, mooning..and singing unladylike songs.

2011 D. B. Kline & J. Tomaszewski Worst Ideas Ever 195 Multiple instances of streakers and flashers as well as multiple moonings,..ultimately forced umpires to call off the game.

1864 ‘W. Lancaster’ Eclogues & Monodramas 83 He, in a mooning fondness for the girl, Would sit.

1869 Galaxy Jan. 16 I am tired of stumbling over that mooning Percy every time I come here.

1905 Athenæum 19 Aug. 232/2 The Celt of ‘the Forty-five’ was not a mooning misanthrope.

1952 J. Steinbeck East of Eden v. 41 Joseph was the fourth son—a kind of mooning boy, greatly beloved and protected by the whole family.

1992 W. Hoskins Making of Eng. Landscape (BNC) 157 In his own parish the changes had been begun immediately after the passing of the act in 1809, while Clare was still a mooning youth.

1893 M. Pemberton Iron Pirate 177 Chinese mooningly silent.

1929 E. O'Neill Dynamo i. ii Mrs. Fife stares after him mooningly.