Citations:hoon

English citations of hoon

Etymology 1

Noun

1. (Australia, slang, dated) A pimp. [from early 20th c.]
2. (Australia, New Zealand, slang) A hooligan, a lout; specifically, a person who drives excessively quickly, loudly or irresponsibly; a street drag racer often driving heavily customized cars.
   • 2007, Tom Dalzell, Terry Victor, editors, The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd edition, Abingdon, Oxon, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 408:

     hoon noun 1 a man who lives off the earnings of prostitutes; a pimp AUSTRALIA, 1949. 2 a loud ignorant lout, a hooligan. Origin unknown. AUSTRALIA, 1938. 3 a person who drives recklessly AUSTRALIA, 1985. 4 a trip in a motor vehicle taken for the pleasure of, especially fast, driving AUSTRALIA, 1996. / hoon verb to drive recklessly AUSTRALIA, 1992.

   • 2008, John Ayto, John Simpson, editors, The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang, 2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 134:

     hoon noun Austral A lout, a rough; a crazy person; a ponce. 1938–. r. beilby That bastard ran ya down, the bloody hoon! (1977). [Origin unknown.]

Verb

1. (Australia, New Zealand) To act loutishly; specifically, to drive excessively quickly, loudly or irresponsibly.

Etymology 2

Verb

1. To make a hooting or howling sound.
   • 1910, William Hope Hodgson, “The Whistling Room”, in Carnacki the Ghost-Finder‎^[1], London: Eveleigh Nash, published 1913, →OCLC:

     All this time, every night, and sometimes most of each night, the hooning whistling of the Room was intolerable. It was as if an intelligence there knew that steps were being taken against it, and piped and hooned in a sort of mad, mocking contempt.

   • 1966, Christina Stead, Dark Places of the Heart, New York, N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, →OCLC, page 278:

     Black flashing storms, the lowings and bellowings of the old sanded forest, the whistling and hooning of nameless birds, the lonesome moons, the weird fifteen-foot stone dwellers of the Old Priory, soft grassy slopes on which lovers lay, […]

   • 2012, Traci Harding, The Light-Field (Triad of Being; book 3), Sydney: HarperCollins, →ISBN:

     Zeven let loose a hooning howl of approval.