U.S. [A familiar abbreviation of RACCOON.]
1. The Raccoon (Procyon lotor), a carnivorous animal of North America.
1839. Marryat, Diary Amer., Ser. I. II. 232. In the Western States, where the racoon is plentiful, they use the abbreviation ’coon when speaking of people.
1850. Lyell, 2nd Vis. U.S., II. 279. Cash paid for coon, mink, wild-cat … and deer-skins.
1872. C. King, Mountain. Sierra Nev., v. 98. I had never killed a coon.
2. Applied to persons: a. A nickname for a member of the old Whig party of the United States, which at one time had the raccoon as an emblem.
(The nickname came up in 1839.)
1848. Lowell, Biglow P., Ser. I. ix. A gethrin’ public sentiment, ’mongst Demmercrats and Coons.
a. 1860. Boston Post, in Bartlett, Dict. Amer., s.v., Democrats … rout the coons, beat them, overwhelm them.
b. A sly, knowing fellow; a ‘fellow.’
1860. Punch, XXXIX. 227 (Farmer). Then baby kicked up such a row As terrified that reverend coon.
1870. Miss Bridgman, R. Lynne, II. xiv. 296. Dicky Blake’s a ’cute little coon.
1881. J. Hawthorne, Fort. Fool, I. xxxii. Jack they called him—a sort of half-wild little coon, that nobody knowd much about.
3. Phrases (chiefly U.S. slang). A gone coon: a person or thing that is ‘done for’ or in a hopeless case; hence gone-cooniness, -coonishness. A coon’s age: emphatic for ‘a long time.’ To hunt the same old coon: to keep doing the same thing. To go the whole coon: ‘to go the whole hog’; to ‘go in for’ a thing thoroughly.
1845. Mr. Giddings, in Congress (Farmer#5). Besides the acquisition of Canada, which is put down on all sides as a gone coon.
1857. Dickens, Lying Awake, in Repr. Pieces, 192 (ibid.). Or, like that sagacious animal in the United States who recognized the colonel who was such a dead shot, I am a gone coon.
a. 1860. Southern Sketches (Bartlett). This child haint had much money in a coon’s age.
1879. Lowell, Poet. Wks. (1879), 384. Meanwhile I inly curse the bore Of hunting still the same old coon.
1883. V. Stuart, Egypt, 304. Before the performance was over he was a gone coon.
1884. H. R. Haweis, My Musical Memories (N. Y., 1884), i. 7. For downright fanaticism and ‘gone-cooniness,’ if I may invent the word, commend me to your violin-maniac.
1890. W. A. Wallace, Only a Sister, 53. When the former forgot the ‘gone coonishness’ of his earlier days.
4. attrib. and Comb., as coon-hunting sb. & a., story; coon-heel, coon-oyster, varieties of North American oysters; coon-skin, the skin of the raccoon, used as a fur (usually attrib.).
1851. Mayne Reid, Scalp Hunt., xx. 144. There is a jauntiness in the set of that coon-skin cap.
1862. T. Hughes, in J. M. Ludlow, Hist. U. S., 329. The usual coon-hunting, whisky-drinking pioneers of the West.
1870. Emerson, Soc. & Solit., Clubs, Wks. (Bohn), III. 100. He liked, in a bar-room, to tell a few coon stories.
1890. Opelousas (La.) Democrat, 8 Feb., 3/4. Coon-hunting still gives great enjoyment to hunters in the mountainous districts of Massachusetts.
Hence Coon v. intr., to creep (along a branch, etc.), clinging close like a raccoon. Coonery, the practice of the Whig ‘coons’ of U.S. (see 2 a above). Coony a., ? bald like a raccoon.
1886. Century Mag., XXXIII. 16, note. In trying to ‘coon’ across Knob Creek on a log, Lincoln fell in.
a. 1860. Boston Post, in Bartlett, Dict. Amer., s.v., Democrats … we must achieve a victory … coonery must fall with all its corruptions and abominations.
1887. Sat. Rev., 16 July, 71. Hat-wearing man becomes Alopeciac, or ‘coony.’
