loon1
/luːn
/noun informal
A silly or foolish person: if only she weren’t such a lovesick loon...
- Prizes should be delivered to the TV director who cut to their box in time to catch him grinning like a loon, boffing a balloon about with his feet and hands.
- Here, a sheepish young yakuza is ordered to kill his insane boss but things go awry when his elder disappears in a town full of loons, zombies, and halfwits.
- And for another, hanging them on your lapel makes you look like a dork, or worse yet a loon.
Origin
Late 19th century: from loon2 (referring to the bird's actions when escaping from danger), perhaps influenced by loony.
This word for ‘a silly person’ comes from the North American loon (mid 17th century), a large water bird also known as a diver. It gets its name from its distinctive cry. The sense silly is from the bird's actions when escaping from danger; perhaps influenced by loony, a mid 19th-century abbreviation of lunatic (Middle English) from Latin luna ‘moon. In the past people thought that the phases of the moon could affect people.
Rhymes
loon2
/luːn/noun
North American term for diver (sense 2).The first, innocuous shower stroked the lake's surface but, when the wind came up, the loons began to call madly....
- Only those who have heard the sound of a loon or a wolf call can truly sympathise with the poet about the beauty of the sound: ‘The wolves howl with a loneliness that is only theirs.’
- This year, the artists showcased their talent with birds for a theme competition, each displaying the delicate feathers of every bird, from eagles to loons.
Origin
Mid 17th century: probably by alteration of Shetland dialect loom, denoting especially a guillemot or a diver, from Old Norse.
loon3
/luːn/verb [no object, with adverbial] British informal
Act in a foolish or desultory way: he decided to loon around London...
- Then again, the man who turned looning into a full-time career generally looks quite vacant.
- I had looned and lazied my way through physical childhood and the misfortune of a crazed adolescence.
- We'd set the bands gear up and generally idle the afternoon away in the bar playing pool, looning around on the beach, and hanging out in various cafés dotted around town before the serious business of playing heavy metal started in the evening.
Origin
1960s: of unknown origin.