A person or thing in a hopeless case; almost or quite extinguished or destroyed.

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1847.  The old year is not quite a goner.—Dow, Jun., ‘Patent Sermons,’ i. 32.

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1854.  Let us tie him up, or he is the goner.—Weekly Oregonian, June 24.

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1856.  My heart leaped into my gullet the minute I saw him. I felt down in the mouth, for I knew I was a goner.—Id., Sept. 27.

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1856.  

        No matter, howbeit, for legends like these,
  Of the ‘goners’ erst met here for frolic or fray;
But speak of the Bulls and the Bears, if you please,
  Blue Mondays, Lame-Ducks, and Black Sheep of to-day.
‘Lines to the Lone Tree near ’Change, Wall-Street,’ iv., Knick. Mag., xlvii. 136 (Feb.).    

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1857.  He exclaimed, “She is a goner!” There to be sure she lay, perfectly dead.—Thoreau, ‘Maine Woods,’ p. 365. (N.E.D.)

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1857.  Two or three times I made up my mind that I was a goner, as the water piled up around me along over the falls.—S. H. Hammond, ‘Wild Northern Scenes,’ p. 61.

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1857.  Had there been even a light breeze, the town [of Oroville] would have gone, sure. Many thought it was a goner anyhow.—San Francisco Call, April 10.

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1859.  Is there an attorney in the company? If there be, for Pity’s sake, send him here, or I’m a ‘goner’?—Knick. Mag., liii. 538 (May).

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