goose

   The goose has long had a reputation for being rather stupid. To call a person a goose therefore implies that he or she is silly, but ‘goose’ is certainly not meant as a serious insult. It has about the same force as ‘you silly thing’ in modern times, though it was probably more forceful when it first began to be used as a vocative in the sixteenth century. Lady Percy addresses her husband as ‘ye giddy goose’ in Henry the Fourth Part One. Romeo also uses it to his friend Mercutio, but in this instance it is partly because of Mercutio’s reference to their wits running ‘a wild-goose chase’. The latter expression, of course, retains the same silly association with the bird. To lead someone a wild goose chase, or to goose them as it was once possible to say, was to fool them. In Vanity Fair, by Thackeray, Miss Crawdon calls Rebecca ‘you goose’ when she thinks she has said something silly. In Pinero’s The Second Mrs Tanqueray occurs: ‘Aubrey: What on earth will Morse think? Paula: Do you trouble yourself about what servants think? Aubrey: Of course. Paula. Goose! They’re only machines made to wait upon people.’ Rumer Godden, in Kingfishers Catch Fire, has a mother saying to her eight-year-old daughter: ‘I’m not going anywhere, you little goose.’ The same author, in The Battle of the Villa Fiorita, has a man say to his lover: ‘My darling goose, you’re jealous.’