boon
/buːn/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.45 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A good thing; a thing to be thankful for or to appreciate duly.
Example Sentences
- "Near-synonyms: gift; blessing, benefit; see also Thesaurus:gift"
- "Finding the dry cave was a boon to the weary travellers."
- "Anaesthetics are a great boon to modern surgery."
- "Diggle Station lies high up in the Pennine Chain, subject to extreme low temperatures. With this and heavy snowfall in the winter months, Diggle bids fair to compete with the Scottish lines under similar weather conditions, and the provision of unfrozen water in the higher ambient temperature of the tunnel must be a boon to harassed engine drivers whose thirsty steeds run short of water up the gruelling 1 in 125 seven-mile climb from Stalybridge."
- "Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus. […] A photo processing technique called focus stacking has changed that. Developed as a tool to electronically combine the sharpest bits of multiple digital images, focus stacking is a boon to biologists seeking full focus on a micron scale."
- "In the other direction, treatments that were decried in their time as paving the road to hell, including vaccination, transfusions, anesthesia, artificial insemination, organ transplants, and in-vitro fertilization, have become unexceptional boons to human well-being."
Etymology
From Middle English boon (“prayer”), from Old Norse bón (“prayer, petition”), from Proto-Germanic *bōniz (“supplication”), influenced by boon (“good, favorable”, adjective). Doublet of ben; see there for more.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
- Obsolete
- British usage
- Archaic
- Uncountable