Definition of "goon" []

• Slang A thug hired to intimidate or harm opponents. (noun)
• Slang A stupid or oafish person. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The BMC calendar is legal -- even without Ford's blessing -- and when you protect yourself from legal liability by shutting it down, you incur PR liability by seeming like a bunch of candy-asses who can be bullied into submission by a memo from some white-shoe legal goon from a Fortune 100."
• "So it is extremely likely that Alice the Goon did influence the now standard meaning of the word goon, but E.C. Segar did not coin the word itself, as it was around for more than a decade before Alice the Goon came into the picture."
• "Milligan is said to have picked the word goon out of a Popeye comic and started using it as derogatory term for people he saw as idiots."