Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. greedy, avaricious.

1811

Lex. Balatronicum n.p.: spooney also delicate, craving for something, longing for sweets. Avaricious. That tit is damned spooney. She’s a spooney piece of goods. He’s a spooney old fellow.

2. very drunk.

1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang. in McLachlan (1964) 268: A man who has been drinking till he becomes disgusting by his very ridiculous behaviour, is said to be spoony drunk.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1842		Manchester Courier 5 Mar. 3/2: Drunk— [...] Spoony [...] Snuffy.
1880		R. Rowe Picked Up in the Streets 17: When they see a sailor a bit sprung coming along, one of them puts out his foot, and when the spooney chap stumbles, the tother [...] grabs his watch.
1888–94		‘Walter’ My Secret Life (1966) I 200: All of us half spoony with champagne after a jolly little supper.

3. weak minded, simple.

1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang. in McLachlan (1964) 268: spooney: foolish, half-witted, nonsensical.
1813		P. Hawker Diary (1893) I 22 Feb. 68: We had some prime slang on the road, and [...] blew up every spoony fellow we could meet.
1827		Egan Anecdotes of the Turf , the Chase etc. 182: She had always dismissed him as too spooney a cove for her company.
1839		Thackeray Yellowplush Papers in Works III (1898) 362: I recklect there was at our school, in Smithfield, a chap of the milksop spoony sort.
1840		E. Howard Jack Ashore I 294: Polls not so green – no, no – not quite so spooney.
1847		J.M. Field Drama in Pokerville 42: He acted little other than ‘spoony’.
1852		Bell’s Life in Sydney 11 Sept. 1/6: He and has pals warn’t going to listen to sich spooney stuff.
1859		C. Mackay Life and Liberty in America 1 158: He [...] declared that the word ‘amiable’ was synonymous with what in English slang is called ‘spooney’.
1865		‘Artemus Ward’ Among the Mormons in Complete Works (1922) 296: Jean Valjean, gloomily picking his way through the sewers of Paris, with the spooney young man of the name of Marius.
1874		J. Greenwood Wilds of London (1881) 7: A more spoony or weak-minded crew it was never my misfortune to fall in with.
1880		E.J. Milliken ‘Cad’s Calendar’ in Punch Almanack n.p.: MAY! The month o’ flowers. Spooney sell!
1885		Essex Newsman 18 Apr. 3/6: I dunno how i came to be so spooney.
1899		F.E. Daniel Recollections of a Rebel Surgeon 146: A spoony, wormy looking little fellow.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 231/1: Spoony stuff (London Theatres’, 1882). Weak, sentimental work, below contempt.

4. effeminate.

1859, 1860

Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.

5. besotted with a member of the opposite sex; occas. used adverbially.

1810		‘Jonny Raw and Polly Clark’ in Batchelar’s Jovial Fellows Collection of Songs 4: Thus she would bore him with her jaw, / Ri tol de rol. / And call him spooney Jonny Raw.
1836		Marryat Mr Midshipman Easy II 149: I never was in love myself, but I’ve seen many others spooney.
1838		T. Haliburton Clockmaker II 15: You know my moddle, says I, lookin’ spooney on her.
1841		W.J. Neale Paul Periwinkle 222: To think of you turning spooney sentimental on a bit of vixen’s flesh.
1848		Talfourd & Seymour Sir Rupert, the Fearless I v: Think of Lurlaine, sir, while you’re getting spoony.
1849		Sam Sly 13 Jan. 1/2: Flemish Poll, and a spooney-looking sailor, tired of astonishing the floor, sit with an amiable-looking creature known by the soubriquet of Mousey.
1859		E. Eden Semi-Detached House (1979) 77: I want Chester to go with me, but he is spooney about his wife, and in a fidget to get home.
1861		T. Hughes Tom Brown at Oxford (1880) 58: Blake got spooney on a gypsy girl.
1869		J. Greenwood Seven Curses of London 317: Brazen-faced women [...] bestowing their blandishments on ‘spoony’ young swells of the ‘commercial’ and shopman type.
1871		O.E. Wood West Point Scrap-Book 338: Spooney Man. – A ladies’ man. Spooney Letter. – A love-letter.
1871		Hamilton Spectator (Vic.) 7 Jan. 2/1: Instead of falling in love [a young man] gets ‘soft’ or ‘sweet’ or ’spooney’.
1874		‘Old Calabar’ Won in a Canter I 221: ‘Charlie [...] is just as spooney upon her as she is on him’.
1875		‘Aliph Cheem’ Lays of Ind (1905) 228: She waited, but Collectors did / Not come in spooney shoals.
1875		M.D. Landon Eli Perkins 137: The ‘spooniest’ young people saunter over to [...] the double seats in Congress Spring Park.
1881		N.Z. Observer (Auckland) 22 Jan. 181/3: A lovely girl, upon whom the susceptible doctor was ‘very spooney’.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. 9/2: Sue flimped a soot bag and a prop. She’s the flyest wire in the mob, and all the family men are spoony on her. Sue stole a reticule and a brooch. She’s the smartest lady’s pocket thief in the company (or ‘school’), and all the thieves are smitten with her.
1883		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 1 Dec. 3/3: Campanini [...] used to be the idol of every spoony, lovesick schoolgirl and adlepated married woman in the city.
1886		Sporting Times 27 Feb. 1/5: ‘You look ill and worn [...] Got spooney on somebody and can’t sleep?’.
1890		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘Otherwise Engaged’ Sporting Times 22 Mar. 1/3: They were in a mental fog, so our hero pinched their prog / While the spoony ones were otherwise engaged.
1895		Coburg Leader (Vic.) 6 July 1/7: Fred W., the spoony young man, should-get some hair restorer to grow a moe.
1895		Harington & LeBrunn [perf. Marie Lloyd] Salute My Bicycle! 🎵 Then some spooney cove says this, / ‘Marie, I should Like a kiss!’.
1903		A. Binstead Pitcher in Paradise 197: Never get really spoony on a Tart of any kind.
1905		Sun. Times (Perth) 5 Mar. 1/1: The Caves Board reports an unparalleled rush of inquiring tourists [...] the said trippers are chiefly bank bucks and spoony solicitors’ clerks [and] the game is not so much stalagmites as the short-skirted attendant.
c.1910		H.E. Lee ‘Tough Luck’ Variety Stage Eng. Plays 🌐 Come on, we are both mixed up in the spooney juice.
1914		Sport (Adelaide) 24 Apr. 3/4: Annie S say she will not give Staggie up even if he is a bit spoony with Rose H.
1918		W.J. Schira diary 13 Dec. 🌐 That would have been a Hell of a spooney night but a convoy came in [...] and was so busy I couldn’t talk to her at all.
1926		Wood & Goddard Dict. Amer. Sl.
1966		C. Stead Cotters’ England (1980) 247: So that’s where you were? Talking spoony to her.

6. depressed; worried.

1835		Sydney Herald 18 June 4/2: [T]hat ere spoon job, which made us both spoonie at the Ould Bailey.
1845		R.S. Surtees Hillingdon Hall I 44: I was sitting in my back shop uncommonly spooney, reflecting on the uncertainty of life, and the certainty of the tax gatherer calling in the morning.

7. as sense 5, in non-amatory use.

1869

H. Smart Breezie Langton I 97: ‘Are you still as “spoony” on that beautiful ballad as you were? The first time I heard you, I believe you sang it three times’.

8. sexually amenable; amorous.

1883		‘Three Chums’ in Boudoir I 3: We know three jolly sisters — little milliners — who work in Oxford Street, such spooney girls.
1914		Sport (Adelaide) 23 Oct. 5/5: Fred S. [...] had a spoony time with Maud D.