goner
Americannoun
-
goners
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of goner
Explanation
A goner is someone or something that can't be saved — it's lost, or doomed. When you know your video game character is about to die, it's clear she's a goner. The informal goner is great for describing a person who's desperate or ill-fated. If you narrowly avoid a bad car accident, you might say, "I thought I was a goner," and if your cat catches a small bird, you can be fairly certain it's a goner. Goner is a colloquial American word that stems from the earlier terms "gone goose" and "gone coon," which have the same meaning.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
When a tree has 25 or more exit holes, it’s probably a goner, Durbin said.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 28, 2024
I kept thinking: "If the next vehicle comes down the hill, the driver will struggle to see me and I will be a goner."
From BBC ● Jan. 13, 2024
The moment Benedick declares he’ll never get married, we know he’s a goner.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 28, 2023
They keep chatting, she asks his age — he’s 34 — and by the time that he drops her off, Lea is a goner and the story is on its way.
From New York Times ● Mar. 2, 2023
"I can't help it. I'm a goner now, anyway. Don't you see the difference?"
From "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway
When Polkinghorne went out to check on her incubated emu eggs after the spring storm caused a power outage, she thought all the unhatched chicks were goners.
From Seattle Times ● May 5, 2022
"When I was in Vietnam, as long as that flag was flying, we were fighting. If there was no flag up there, we were goners, so yea, it means a lot to me."
From Fox News ● Sep. 23, 2021
Photographer Peter Mitchell went about photographing these "goners" before the bulldozers removed every trace of them.
From BBC ● Aug. 31, 2019
The remaining Night's Watch characters are all goners.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 24, 2019
If a supernova explosion happened within five hundred light-years of us, we would be goners, according to Evans–"it would wreck the show," as he cheerfully puts it.
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
