boon

Gay; merry; jovial; convivial.

Adjective

  1. Gay; merry; jovial; convivial.
    • Greedily ſhe ingorg’d without restraint, / And knew not eating Death: Satiate at length, / And hight’nd as with Wine, jocond and boon, / Thus to herſelf ſhe pleaſingly began. - 1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise...
    • I knovv the Infirmity of our Family; vve are apt to play the Boon-Companion, and throvv avvay our Money in our Cups: […] - 1712, Humphry Polesworth [pseudonym; John Arbuthnot], “How the Guardians of the Deceas’d Mrs....
    • I’m a lonely old man; I lead a life that I don’t like, among boon companions, who make me melancholy. - 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, “In or Near the Temple Garden”, in The History of...
  2. Kind; bountiful; benign.
    • With mazie error under pendant ſhades / Ran Nectar, viſiting each plant, and fed /Flours worthy of Paradiſe which not nice Art / In Beds and curious Knots, but Nature boon / Powrd forth profuſe on Hill and Dale and...
  3. Good; prosperous.
    • boon voyage

Origin

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dewh₂-der.? Proto-Italic *dwenos Old Latin duenos Old Latin duonus Latin bonus Old French bon Old Northern French boonbor. Middle English boon English boon From Middle English boon, bone, borrowed from Old Northern French boon, from Old French bon (“good”), from Latin bonus (“good”), from Old Latin duonus, dvenos, from Proto-Indo-European *dū- (“to respect”).

Forms

booner boonest

Related

bounty

Derived

ace boon coon boon companion

Noun Entry 2

  1. A good thing; a thing to be thankful for or to appreciate duly.
    • Near-synonyms: gift; blessing, benefit; see also Thesaurus:gift
    • Finding the dry cave was a boon to the weary travellers.
    • Anaesthetics are a great boon to modern surgery.

    Synonyms: gift blessing benefit benefaction boon concession donative fairing grant present tithing

    Antonyms: bane

  2. That which is asked or granted as a benefit or favor; a gift or benefaction.
    • I gave you life. Can you not return the boon by giving me death, my lord? - 1871, James De Mille, The Cryptogram, New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC, page 194, column 2:
    • Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning. - 1881, English Revised Version, The New Testament, in...
    • [T]he hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man[.] - 1949, Joseph Campbell, “The Hero and the God”, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces:
  3. A prayer; petition.
    • The wofull husbandman doth lowd complaine, / To ſee his whole yeares labor loſt ſo ſoone, / For which to God he made ſo many an idle boone. - 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […],...
  4. An unpaid service due by a tenant to his lord.
  5. A blessing, typically a supernatural power, granted to an ascetic by a god or goddess.
    • A telling story is that of Vikra, who, after practicing severe tapas for many years, called on Śiva, asking him to grant the boon that whosoever's head he would touch, that person would die instantly. - 2007, Klaus...

Origin

From Middle English boon (“prayer”), from Old Norse bón (“prayer, petition”), from Proto-Germanic *bōniz (“supplication”), influenced by boon (“good, favorable”, adjective). Doublet of ben; see there for more.

Forms

boons

Derived

boon and bane boonless boon or bane

Noun Entry 3

  1. The woody portion of flax, separated from the fiber as refuse matter by retting, braking, and scutching.

Origin

From Middle English bone (“reed, stem, husk”), akin to or alteration of Old English bune (“reed; drinking cup”).

Synonyms

shive shove