loony
/ˈluːni/adjective, noun
loony is a derogatory, offensive adjective meaning “Insane” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled L-O-O-N-Y and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 2 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does loony mean?
adjective
- 1
derogatoryinformaloffensiveInsane.
loony scheme
- 2
derogatoryinformaloffensiveVery silly, absurd.
noun
- 1
derogatoryinformaloffensiveAn insane or very foolish person.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce loony?
- /ˈluːni/
Loony has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-ca-loonie.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of loony
- loonier comparative
- looniest superlative
- loonie
- luny
- looney
- loonies plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is loony?
Loony appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 37,943rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Words people confuse with loony
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: loonie (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
Where does loony come from?
Shortened from lunatic, and likely also from loon ("rascal", and also the bird) + -y.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).