Word.ws English Dictionary

goober

UK/ˈɡuːbə//ˈɡubɚ/

goober noun: a peanut.

Noun

goober (plural goobers)

  1. (Southern US) A peanut.
    • A few bags Gouber Pea, or Ground Pea1833 November 7, Louisville Public Advertiser
    • But he so seam I frade of he, I guess he steal my goober.1834 May 24, Cherokee Phoenix, page 3
  2. (Southern US, dated, slang) A Georgian or North Carolinian, particularly one from the pine forests of the Sandhills region.
    • Conscripts by the dozen...
      Come pouring in the Castle...
      Some from Mississippi state and “Goobers” from Tar river.1863, anonymous author, “Castle Thunder”, in Louis Napoléon Boudrye, editor, Historic Records of the Fifth New York Cavalry..., Appendix, page 339
    • The peanuts or earth-nuts known in North Carolina and the adjoining States as Goober peas, so that during the late Civil War a conscript from the so-called ‘piney woods’ of that State was apt to be nick-named a Goober.1871, Maximilian Schele de Vere, Americanisms, page 57
  3. (Internet, US, childish, slang) A foolish, simple, or amusingly silly person.
    • For Ralph, any encouragement is too much. When Lisa gives Ralph a valentine bearing that locomotive pun that so affected The Simpsons’ showrunner, Ralph misinterprets the gesture as a genuine display of romantic interest rather than a gesture of pity from a thoughtful young geek to a friendless...2012 August 5, Nathan Rabin, “The Simpsons (Classic): 'I Love Lisa'”, in A.V. Club
    • [Keanu] Reeves had spent much of the decade as a celebrity goober—a great-looking guy best known for being a bland actor (at least by traditional acting standards).2022, Chuck Klosterman, The Nineties, New York: Penguin Press, →ISBN
  4. (US, slang) A quantity of sputum.
    • […] spat a goober into the sunbaked dust between them […]1994, Tabor Evans, Longarm and the Barbed Wire Bullies, page 139

Verb

goober (third-person singular simple present goobers, present participle goobering, simple past and past participle goobered)

  1. (intransitive, slang) To drool or dribble.
  2. (slang, transitive) To drip or slather; to apply a gooey substance to a surface.

Synonyms of goober

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of goober

Forms of goober

Noun
pluralgoobers
alternative formgouber
Verb
third-person singular presentgoobers
present participlegoobering
past participlegoobered
pastgoobered

Origin of goober

Via Gullah from Kongo nguba (“peanut”).

Words formed from goober

Phrases with goober

Words that rhyme with goober

Questions about goober

What does goober mean?
Goober means a peanut.
What part of speech is goober?
Goober can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce goober?
Goober is pronounced /ˈɡuːbə/ (UK).
What is the plural of goober?
The plural of goober is goobers.

Words near goober in the dictionary

  1. goo-goo eyes
  2. goo-gooism
  3. goo-goos
  4. Gooandra
  5. Goobarragandra
  6. goober
  7. goober bean
  8. goober beans
  9. goober grabbler
  10. goober grabblers
  11. goober pea

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: goober (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-goober.ogg.

Cite this entry: “goober.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/goober. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.