Goober

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈɡuːbə/

Definitions

1. A variety of legume often used as a food source, an informal label for someone perceived as silly or foolish, and a descriptor for a clumsy or goofy individual or action
2. This term refers to a legume also known as a peanut, a colloquial term for a foolish person, and a way to describe someone or something that is awkward or silly
3. A type of legume commonly called a peanut ; a casual name for a person considered to lack sense ; someone or something that acts in a tactless or awkward manner

Etymology: The peanut's American nickname has an African ancestor. "Goober" traces back to the Kongo word "nguba," meaning peanut, which passed into Gullah, the creole spoken by enslaved and later coastal communities in the Carolinas and Georgia, and from there into English. A 1983 scholarly study in the journal Maledicta describes the word as a genuine Africanism, pointing to Kimbundu "nguba" as a related term for the same groundnut. The word's path from a specific crop to a term of teasing is part of the story of how English absorbed African vocabulary in the American South. The peanut was itself a crop that came to the Americas from South America, so the word carried a plant name across an ocean, then across a language boundary, before it reached the dinner table.

Synonyms: peanut