loonie
loonie Lexical Profile
loonie Game Scores & Validity
• noun
Canadian A gold-colored Canadian one-dollar coin, featuring the image of a common loon on its reverse side, or the Canadian dollar as a unit of currency.
"She dropped two loonies into the parking meter before heading into the cafe."
An informal variant spelling of 'loony', referring to a crazy, foolish, or eccentric person.
"Only a complete loonie would go swimming in the lake in the middle of January."
Word Nuance & Usage
In Canadian English, the spelling 'loonie' almost exclusively refers to the one-dollar coin or the Canadian dollar itself, whereas 'loony' is the preferred spelling for a foolish or eccentric person.
• Rhymes for loonie
Word Origin & Etymology
Coined in Canada in 1987 when the one-dollar coin bearing an image of a common loon on the reverse was introduced; the informal sense of a foolish or eccentric person is an alteration of 'loony', shortened from 'lunatic'.