coo

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

• enPR: ko͞o
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /kuː/
  • (General American) IPA^(key): /ku/
• Rhymes: -uː
• Homophone: coup

Onomatopoeic; compare Dutch koeren.

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, and 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.

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.
   • 1763, C[harles] Churchill, The Prophecy of Famine. A Scots Pastoral, 2nd edition, London: Printed for the author, and sold by G. Kearsly, in Ludgate-street, OCLC 752890050, page 15:

     No birds, except as birds of paſſage, flew, / No bee was known to hum, no dove to coo.

   • [1784?], [John] O'Keeffe, Songs, Duets, and Chorusses, in the New Musical Farce of Peeping Tom of Coventry. As Performed at the Theatre Royal, [London?: s.n.], OCLC 84806917, page 4:

     DUET—MAYOR and MAUD. […] Like a Dove I'll coo and bill, pretty Maud, / I will not coo and bill, Mr. Mayor.

   • 1784, Voltaire, “Memoirs of Voltaire. Written by Himself. Part the Third”, in Memoirs of the Life of Voltaire. Written by Himself. Translated from the French, Dublin: Printed for Messrs. Moncrieffe, Walker, Exshaw, Wilson, Jenkin, Burton, White, Byrne, Marchbank, Cash, and Heery, OCLC 753443132, page 176:

     But oh! ſhall I, Misfortune's bondman, ſpeak / Of pleaſures and delights, where ſorrows ſhriek! / Can plaintive nightingale, or turte-dove, / When vultures tear them, ſing or coo of love?

   • 1810, Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake; a Poem, Edinburgh: Printed [by James Ballantyne and Co.] for John Ballantyne and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and William Miller, OCLC 6632529, canto III (The Gathering), stanza II, page 99:

     The black-bird and the speckled thrush / Good-morrow gave from brake and brush; / In answer cooed the cushat dove, / Her notes of peace, and rest, and love.

   • 1896, Frances Hodgson Burnett, “The Doves Sat upon the Window-ledge and Lowly Cooed and Cooed”, in A Lady of Quality: Being a Most Curious, hitherto Unknown History, as Related by Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff but Not Presented to the World of Fashion through the Pages of The Tatler, and Now for the First Time Written Down, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, OCLC 1001566518, page 360:

     Then did her soft breath stop and she lay still, her eyes yet open and smiling at the blossoms and the doves who sat upon the window-ledge and lowly cooed and cooed.

   • 2014 June 26, A. A Dowd, “Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler spoof rom-com clichés in They Came Together”, in The A.V. Club‎, archived from the original on 27 November 2017:

     As Norah Jones coos sweet nothings on the soundtrack, the happy couple—played by Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler—canoodle through a Manhattan montage, making pasta for two, swimming through a pile of autumn leaves, and horsing around at a fruit stand.

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.

• bill and coo
• cooer
• cooingly

Clipping of cool; compare foo.

coo (comparative more coo, superlative most coo)

1. (slang) Cool.

Imitative.[1]

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 1227855:

     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, number 35, London: Sportscene Specialist Press, ISSN 0269-6983, OCLC 877748737, 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, number 92, London: ECC Publications, ISSN 0262-5458, OCLC 225914690, 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, number 75, [Ludlow, Shropshire]: Newsfield, ISSN 0954-8661, OCLC 500099432, 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.

• OOC

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

coo m (genitive singular coo, plural coyin)

1. dog
2. hound
3. cur
4. wolf dog

• (dog): moddey

• “1 cú” in Dictionary of the Irish Language, Royal Irish Academy, 1913–76.

coo

1. first-person singular present indicative of coar

• coe, cou

From Old English cū, from Proto-Germanic *kūz, from Proto-Indo-European *gʷṓws (“cow”).

• IPA^(key): /kuː/

coo (plural kye or coos)

1. cow

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