Wiktionary

coo

See also: Coo, COO, côo, and co-o

English

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WOTD – 2 February 2018

Pronunciation

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Pigeons in the Kadıköy district of Istanbul, Turkey. The sound made by these birds is usually described as a coo.

Etymology 1

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Onomatopoeic; compare Dutch koeren.

Noun

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coo (plural coos)

  1. The murmuring sound made by a dove or pigeon.
    • 1979, Mei-Fang Cheng, “Progress and Prospects in Ring Dove Research: A Personal View”, in Jay S[eth] Rosenblatt, Robert A[ubrey] Hinde, Colin Beer, Marie-Claire Busnel, editors, Advances in the Study of Behavior, volume 9, New York, N.Y., London: Academic Press, →ISBN, section III (Hormones and Behavior: Lehrman’s Hypotheses), page 99:
      The male [ring dove] will continue nest-coos for 3–4 days until his female partner begins to nest-coo. At that point the male's nest-coo begins to become less frequent […].
  2. (by extension) An expression of pleasure made by a person.
    • 2001, Denton L. Roberts, Caddy Roberts-Williams, “What You Need to Know to Be Useful”, in Living as Healer: (Everyone Does Therapy and Should … Know How), Pasadena, Calif.: Hope Publishing House, →ISBN, page 23:
      An infant has only cries and coos with which to communicate distress and well-being. Adults have many more ways of expressing themselves. However, their expressions of disease and ease can be boiled down to sophisticated cries and coos. A call for help in whatever form is a cry. A sense of well-being however expressed is a coo. Healing in the context of cries and coos can be viewed as the process of resolving the cries and fostering the coos.
Derived terms
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Translations
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Verb

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coo (third-person singular simple present coos, present participle cooing, simple past and past participle cooed)

  1. (transitive, intransitive) To make a soft murmuring sound, as a pigeon.
  2. (intransitive) To speak in an admiring fashion, to be enthusiastic about.
    • 2013, Nicola Cornick, chapter 14, in One Night with the Laird (Harlequin HQN Historical Romance), Don Mills, Ont.: Harlequin HQN, →ISBN:
      They were too busy cooing over the baby and his parents were too busy cooing over each other.
Derived terms
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Translations
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Etymology 2

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Clipping of cool; compare foo.

Adjective

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coo (comparative more coo, superlative most coo)

  1. (slang) Cool.

Etymology 3

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Imitative.[1]

Interjection

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coo

  1. An expression of approval, fright, surprise, etc. [from early 20th c.]
    • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter VII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
      I stood outside the door for a space, letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would", as Jeeves tells me cats do in adages, then turned the handle softly, pushed – also softly – and, carrying on into the interior, found myself confronted by a girl in housemaid's costume who put a hand to her throat like somebody in a play and leaped several inches in the direction of the ceiling. "Coo!" she said, having returned to terra firma and taken aboard a spot of breath. "You gave me a start, sir!" […] "If you cast an eye on him, you will see that he's asleep now." "Coo! So he is."
    • 1988 November, Sean Kelly, “Professional BMX Simulator [video game review]”, in Teresa Maughan, editor, Your Sinclair‎[2], number 35, London: Sportscene Specialist Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 14 May 2016:
      The last track on each of the three sections is a professional course, where you can customise your bike by changing the tyres and the size of chainwheel. Coo!
    • 1989 November, “Competitions”, in Jim Douglas, editor, Sinclair User: The Independent Magazine for the Independent User‎[3], number 92, London: ECC Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 21 October 2013:
      We want you to come up with a side splitting caption for a picture drawn by the fair hand of those at System 3. If you turn out to be the Funniest "Person", we'll give you a big wopping model of a dinosaur. Coo.
    • 1990 April, “Crash Readers’ Awards Ceremony”, in Oliver Frey, editor, Crash: ZX Spectrum‎[4], number 75, [Ludlow, Shropshire]: Newsfield, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 25 June 2017:
      Coo, I've only had four gallons of extra caffeine coffee today so I'm not my usual talking-to-PR-girlies-for-hours-on-end self. But bear with me a mo while I get myself together (audience waits for an age while he searches through his coat for the golden envelope). Here it is! Coo, and the winner is The NewZealand Story.

References

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  1. ^ “coo”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Anagrams

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Galician

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Verb

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coo

  1. first-person singular present indicative of coar

Manx

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Etymology

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From Old Irish cú (“dog, hound”), from Primitive Irish ᚉᚒᚅᚐ (cuna, genitive), from Proto-Celtic *kū, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱwṓ (“dog”).

Noun

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coo m (genitive singular coo, plural coyin)

  1. dog
    Synonym: moddey
  2. hound
  3. cur
  4. wolf dog

Derived terms

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Mutation

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Manx mutation
Radical Lenition Eclipsis
coo choo goo
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every
possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

References

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Portuguese

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Alternative forms

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Pronunciation

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  • Rhymes: -ou
  • Hyphenation: co‧o

Verb

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coo

  1. first-person singular present indicative of coar

San Juan Colorado Mixtec

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Etymology

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From Proto-Mixtec *kòòʔ.

Noun

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còò

  1. snake
  2. worm

Derived terms

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References

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  • Stark Campbell, Sara, et al. (1986) Diccionario mixteco de San Juan Colorado (Serie de vocabularios y diccionarios indígenas “Mariano Silva y Aceves”; 29)‎[5] (in Spanish), México, D.F.: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, A.C., page 9

Scots

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Old English cū, from Proto-West Germanic *kō (“cow”).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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coo (plural kye or coos)

  1. cow

Usage notes

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The regular collective plural form is kye (from Old English); the weak plural coos is used only after numerals.

West Makian

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Pronunciation

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Verb

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coo

  1. (transitive) Alternative form of co (“to see”)

Conjugation

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Conjugation of coo (action verb)
singular plural
inclusive exclusive
1st person tocoo mocoo acoo
2nd person nocoo focoo
3rd person inanimate icoo docoo
animate
imperative nocoo, coo focoo, coo

References

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  • Clemens Voorhoeve (1982) The Makian languages and their neighbours‎[6], Pacific linguistics
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Note 5