gooey

adj

1. (informal)Having the consistency of goo: soft or viscous, and sticky.

   “gooey liquid covered the floor”

   “The cookies, soft and gooey, proved a smash hit at the party.”

   “[O]ysters, ice-cream, and plenty of chocolates with that goo-ey, slithery stuff in the middle. Makes you sick to think of it, eh?”

   “He would dip the point of the yen hok into a jar of dark-brown gooey stuff that looked like tar [opium], then hold a drop over the flame until it began to swell up like a tiny balloon, adding more to it now and then.”

   “To avoid the gooiest mess you ever saw, plus the banshee howls of your support people, empty all of the gasoline from the gravity feed gas can of the PU-422/U generator set (which powers both radars).”

2. (figuratively, informal)Emotional or sentimental, especially to an excessive extent; mushy, soppy.

   “What flower has been bred in more than three thousand varieties, and become the symbol of the gooeyest human sentimentality and pampering?”

   “Nobody goes all gooey over a character like me and talks about having half a million dollars and offers me a trip to Rio and a nice home complete with all the luxuries.”

   “And that cat turns my stomach. I thought you said Spaniards weren't gooey—I've never seen anybody gooeyer than she is about that thing.”

   “Yet sooner or later, even the most devout Disneyphobe would break down and admit that, as a child, they'd shed an elephant tear or two for Dumbo's mummy; or felt their nose growing Pinocchio-style every time they fibbed about the dog eating their homework; or simply swooned at some gooey gouached sunset.”

   “She could still have a family. She could afford it. If she wanted to. But she's never felt the urge. Never felt the gooey drooliness she's observed in other women when they peek into a pram.”

3. (archaic, figuratively, informal)Distasteful, unpleasant.

   “Mr. Hugh Dillman's Palm Beach divorce suit will be gooey, Three of his golf-playing ???? will be mentioned …”

noun

1. (informal)A thing which is soft or viscous, and sticky.

   “On impulse, Pat stopped at a bakery. […] He came out with a box full of gooies—éclairs, cream horns, Napoleons— […] and we parked outside the college grounds and ate them, yapping at each other and smearing ourselves with chocolate and cream.”

   “I put the "gooeys," green fluorescent snots, into Louie's nose, set up his brain, and get ready to play the game with my mom. We keep putting our fingers up Louie's nose and pulling gooeys out of it.”

2. (dated, derogatory, figuratively, informal)A person who is regarded as weak or worthless; a fool.

   “But only a confirmed chump and irremediable ‘gooey’ comes up for a third ‘chuck.’ […] ‘Jest jollyin’ these gooeys, that’s how’, he said.”

3. (US, figuratively, informal)A person who favours closer relationships with other people and less structured settings, rather than formal, organized settings; also, an educational approach, curriculum, etc., which is less structured.

   “Planned variation was based on systematically applying different educational approaches developed by academic experts, each of whom was to become a "sponsor" of a single type of program – from highly structured classroom models, sometimes called "pricklies," to open classrooms and more exploratory environments, dubbed "gooeys."”

   “Alan Watts says that these two types may be named the "prickly" people and the "gooey" people. The pricklies, he says, the Marthas, are tough-minded, rigorous, and precise and like to stress differences and divisions between things. The gooeys, the Marys, are tender-minded romanticists who love wide generalizations and grand syntheses.”

   “The longstanding dispute between the phonics and whole language approaches to early instruction […] has been colourfully described as the ‘Pricklies versus the Gooies’. The ‘Pricklies’ emphasise the structure of the curriculum and provide lots of teacher-directed drill, especially in the teaching of ‘phonics’. The ‘Gooies’ emphasise the child’s self-directed exploration of print. The teacher provides guided experience, especially of whole language, in rich meaningful context.”