boon

• IPA^(key): /buːn/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːn

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.

boon (plural boons)

1. A good thing; a thing to be thankful for or to appreciate duly.

   Antonym: bane

   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.

   • 1959 February, “Letters to the Editor: Diggle Water Troughs”, in Railway Magazine, page 135:

     Diggle Station lies high up in the Pennine Chain, subject to extreme low temperatures. With this and heavy snowfall in the winter months, Diggle bids fair to compete with the Scottish lines under similar weather conditions, and the provision of unfrozen water in the higher ambient temperature of the tunnel must be a boon to harassed engine drivers whose thirsty steeds run short of water up the gruelling 1 in 125 seven-mile climb from Stalybridge.

   • 2013 July–August, Catherine Clabby, “Focus on Everything”, in American Scientist‎^[1], volume 100, number 4, archived from the original on 7 September 2013:

     Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus. […] A photo processing technique called focus stacking has changed that. Developed as a tool to electronically combine the sharpest bits of multiple digital images, focus stacking is a boon to biologists seeking full focus on a micron scale.

   • 2023 July 21, Patrick Kingsley, “What’s Reasonable? A Debate Over a High Court’s Reach Divides Israel.”, in The New York Times‎^[2], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 25 July 2023:

     Supporters of the measure, which Parliament is expected to vote on next Monday, present it as a boon for democracy: a modest limit on the ways in which an elected government can be stymied by unelected judges, who will in any case still have other tools to overrule ministers.

   • 2023 October 11, Jonathan Cook, “Israel-Palestine war: The blood of Gaza is on the West’s hands as much as Israel’s”, in Middle East Eye‎^[3]:

     President Joe Biden has declared - approvingly - that a “long war” is ahead between Israel and Hamas. Washington seems to relish long wars, which always prove a boon to its arms industries and a distraction from domestic troubles.

2. That which is asked or granted as a benefit or favor; a gift or benefaction.
   • 1871, James De Mille, The Cryptogram, New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC, page 194, column 2:

     I gave you life. Can you not return the boon by giving me death, my lord?

   • 1881, English Revised Version, The New Testament, in the revised version of 1881, with fuller references, Oxford: Oxford University Press, published 1910, James 1:17, page 548:

     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.

   • 1949, Joseph Campbell, “The Hero and the God”, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

     [T]he hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man[.]

3. (obsolete) A prayer; petition.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 34, page 503:

     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.

4. (British, dialectal) An unpaid service due by a tenant to his lord.
5. (Hinduism) A blessing, typically a supernatural power, granted to an ascetic by a god or goddess.
   • 2007, Klaus Klostermaier, A Survey of Hinduism: Third Edition, New York: State University of New York Press, page 38:

     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.

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”).

boon (comparative booner, superlative boonest)

1. (now only in boon companion) Gay; merry; jovial; convivial.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 791-794:

     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.

   • 1712, Humphry Polesworth [pseudonym; John Arbuthnot], “How the Guardians of the Deceas’d Mrs. Bull’s Three Daughters Came to John, and What Advice They Gave Him; wherein in Briefly Treated the Characters of the Three Daughters: Also John Bull’s Answer to the Three Guardians”, in John Bull in His Senses: Being the Second Part of Law is a Bottomless-Pit. […], Edinburgh: […] James Watson, […], →OCLC, page 30:

     I knovv the Infirmity of our Family; vve are apt to play the Boon-Companion, and throvv avvay our Money in our Cups: […]

   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, “In or Near the Temple Garden”, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume II, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC, page 110:

     I’m a lonely old man; I lead a life that I don’t like, among boon companions, who make me melancholy.

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 16: Eumaeus]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC, part III [Nostos], page 576:

     ―No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn’t personally repose much trust in that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher, and friend, if I were in your shoes.

   • 1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC:

     [T]he boon twins Art and Con aged thirty-seven years […]

   • 1985, Herbert Kretzmer (English lyrics), Les Misérables (musical), "Master of the House," second and third refrains, fifth line:

     (2) "Everybody's boon companion, / Everybody's chaperon"; (3) "Everybody's boon companion: / Give[s] 'em everything he's got"

2. (archaic) Kind; bountiful; benign.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 239-243:

     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 Plaine, / […]

3. (obsolete) Good; prosperous.

   boon voyage

From Middle English bone (“reed, stem, husk”), akin to or alteration of Old English bune (“reed; drinking cup”).^[1]

boon (uncountable)

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

• shive, shove

• Bono, NOBO, Obon, noob

From Dutch boon, from Middle Dutch bône, from Old Dutch *bōna, Proto-West Germanic *baunu, from Proto-Germanic *baunō.

• IPA^(key): /bʊə̯n/

• Audio:

  (file)

boon (plural bone, diminutive boontjie)

1. bean

• → Xhosa: imbotyi (from the diminutive)

From Middle Dutch bône, from Old Dutch *bōna, from Proto-Germanic *baunō.

• IPA^(key): /boːn/
• (Belgium) IPA^(key): [boːn]
• (Netherlands) IPA^(key): [boʊ̯n]

• Audio (Netherlands):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: boon
• Rhymes: -oːn

boon f or m (plural bonen, diminutive boontje n)

1. bean

   Hypernym: peulvrucht

• Afrikaans: boon
  • → Xhosa: imbotyi (from the diminutive)
• Berbice Creole Dutch: bono
• Negerhollands: bontśi, boontje, boonschi (from the diminutive)
  • → Virgin Islands Creole: bontsi (archaic)
• Sranan Tongo: bonki
  • → Caribbean Hindustani: bongki
• → Caribbean Javanese: bontyis (from the diminutive plural)
• → Indonesian: buncis (from the diminutive plural)
  • → Petjo: bontjies, boontjies
• → Javanese: buncis (from the diminutive plural)
• → Papiamentu: bonchi, boontsje (from the diminutive)

Borrowed from Old Norse bón, from Proto-Germanic *bōniz.

• bone

• IPA^(key): /boːn/
• Rhymes: -oːn

boon (plural boons or boonen)

1. prayer, supplication, request
2. boon, bonus

• English: boon
• Scots: boon

• “bọ̄n, n.(2)”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Borrowed from Old Northern French boon, from Old French bon (“good”).

• bone, boun, bon

• IPA^(key): /boːn/
• Rhymes: -oːn

boon

1. good

• English: boon

• “bọ̄n, bōn, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

boon

1. alternative form of bon

boon m (oblique and nominative feminine singular boone, comparative meillor, superlative meillor)

1. alternative form of bon