Dictionary

boon coon en · NOUN

Etymology

A rhyming compound from boon (companion) + coon (“a black person”).

Meanings

1. (qualifier:African-American Vernacular, slang) A close companion.
   • I wanna stay in my hood. It’s flavorful. I feel safe there. I know it like the back of my hand. My boon coons are there. They love me. I wouldn’t want to live with white people. They may not love me. 2002, Tracy Bachrach Ehlers, quoting Sugar Turner [pseudonym], “Tracy’s Introduction”, in Sugar Turner, Tracy Bachrach Ehlers, Sugar’s Life in the Hood: The Story of a Former Welfare Mother, Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, →ISBN, page 3:
   • The vivacious and dynamic Harriet Blackburn, a Midwesterner, was, she reminisces fondly, “my boon coon.” Harriet had “all the clothes, the styles and all the values of the black bourgeoisie,” Eleanor laughs. “Yet we were fast friends ’cause she was a colored girl, by which I mean we were of the same culture.” 2003, Joan Steinau Lester, “Far from U Street”, in Eleanor Holmes Norton: Fire in My Soul, New York, N.Y.: Atria Books, →ISBN, part 1 (Full of the Faith That the Dark Past Has Taught Us), page 70:
   • “I know it was true,” whispered the trusty, “cause a friend of mine, my boon coon, my main man, was one of those asked, and he told me about it. And he don’t lie. Not to me.” 1985, James Farmer, “Which Side Are You On?”, in Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement, New York, N.Y.: Arbor House, →ISBN, part 1 (Mississippi Revisited), page 11:

Forms

Deriveds

ace boon coon