goboon

plural goboons · alternative gaboon

1. colloquialA receptacle for spit; a spittoon, a spitbox; a spit bucket.

   He came into the limelight during segregation when a falling goboon brought with it a shower of something else and he earned the name of Reiny and a black N five stars.

   1923, Lucky Bag (U.S. Naval Academy yearbook) for 1923, entry for "Dwight Harvey Day", p. 75

   2 more examples

   [About Antek's bar:] Neither bright neon nor a soft fluorescence lighted either his ceiling or his walls; but there was plenty of butchershop sawdust along the floor and an old-fashioned golden goboon for every four bar stools.

   1949, Nelson Algren, The Man with the Golden Arm

   In the House chamber, weary Speaker Sam Rayburn, pausing only to spit with experienced accuracy into his goboon, cleared hundreds of routine bills with incessant repetition of the magic words: "Without objection, so ordered."

   1952 July 14, “The Congress: Hidden Shoals”, in Time, volume LX, number 2