coop

From Middle English cǒupe, cupe, from Old English cȳpe (“basket, cask”) or possibly from Middle Dutch cûpe (compare modern Dutch kuip, Saterland Frisian kupe, Middle Low German kûpe), from Old Saxon *kûpa, côpa (“cask”) (compare Middle Low German kôpe, Old High German chôfa, chuofa, Middle High German kuofe, modern German Kufe (“cask (feminine)”), probably from Latin cūpa, Medieval Latin cōpa (“cask”). However, the Oxford English Dictionary notes that if the word is from Latin, “it is difficult to account for the umlaut in Old English cýpe”.

• enPR: ko͞op, (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /kuːp/

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• Rhymes: -uːp
• Homophone: coupe

coop (plural coops)

1. A basket, pen or enclosure for birds or small animals.
   • 1927 December, Rob R. Slocum, “Marketing Poultry”, in Farmers' Bulletin (Bulletin (United States Department of Agriculture, Division of Publications)), number 1377, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, published 1928, OCLC 1696411, page 11:

     Poorly ventilated coops are likely to result in losses by suffocation, particularly during hot weather, when the coops are overcrowded. The bottom of the coop should be built solid of one-half-inch boards to prevent the birds' toes from sticking through and being injured.

   • 2011, Connie M. Ramsey, Calvin Coyote and the Chicken Coop Caper, Mustang, Okla.: Tate Publishing & Enterprises, →ISBN:

     "Well," said Calvin, "we could go over to the chicken coop this afternoon when all the hens are inside laying eggs. We might find some clues."

   • 2012, Kevin McElroy; Matthew Wolpe, “Preface”, in Reinventing the Chicken Coop: 14 Original Designs with Step-by-Step Building Instructions, North Adams, Mass.: Storey Publishing, →ISBN, page 8:

     With this collection of 14 coop designs, our hope is to expand the definition of what a chicken coop is or could be. Surely, building more time-tested coop structures would be sufficient, and we love the traditional coops out there. […] How can chicken coops better serve users in the contemporary world? How can they look and function differently? What kinds of materials can be used? Can chicken coops be treated like a piece of outdoor furniture? Can chicken coops serve multiple purposes in a well-functioning small urban farm?

2. A wickerwork basket (kipe) or other enclosure for catching fish.
   • 1834 October, H. F., “Suggestions Relative to the Oil Fisheries”, in The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine, number III, London: Published for Henry Colburn by Richard Bentley, OCLC 933313799, page 241:

     Falling in with a shoal of porpoises the vessel should be prepared with coops manufactured of copper wire, or other substance of great elasticity and strength; these coops to be lowered by blocks and pulleys in every direction round the vessel, and to be in the same manner hoisted when entered by the fish.

   • 1870 July 11, Chief Justice Bovill, Court of Common Pleas, “Lord Leconfield and others, appellants, v. Earl of Lonsdale, respondent”, in Montagu Chambers, Francis Towers Streeten, and Frederick Hoare Colt, editors, The Law Journal Reports for the Year 1870 (Common Law, New Series), volume XXXIX, London: Printed by Spottiswoode and Co., New-Street Square. Published by Edward Bret Ince, 5, Quality Court, Chancery Lane, OCLC 70896711, page 305:

     At a Court held 10th December, 1868, the Special Commissioners for English Fisheries made an order declaring to be legal, subject to certain alterations, a coop or fishing apparatus of the respondent, situated at Salmon Hall, near Workington, in the river Derwent, in the county of Cumberland, which the respondent claimed to use as legal. […] The said coop is a fishing-box or apparatus inserted in or forming part of the structure of a dam built across the river Derwent, […]

   • 1900–1907, Andrew Lang, A History of Scotland from the Roman Occupation, Edinburgh; London: W[illiam] Blackwood and Sons, OCLC 2429124:

     The rivers and estuaries of the country still abounded in fish, and the right of salmon-fishing by nets or "yairs" (coops) was jealously guarded by land-holders.

3. (figuratively, slang) A narrow place of confinement, a cage; a jail, a prison.
   • 1785, William Cowper, “The Garden”, in The Task, a Poem, in Six Books. By William Cowper [...] To which are Added, by the Same Author, An Epistle to Joseph Hill, Esq. Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools, and The History of John Gilpin, London: Printed for J[oseph] Johnson, No. 72 St. Paul's Church-Yard, OCLC 221351486; republished as The Task. A Poem. In Six Books. To which is Added, Tirocinium: or, A Review of Schools, new edition, Philadelphia, Pa.: Printed for Thomas Dobson, bookseller, in Second-street, second door above Chestnut-street, 1787, OCLC 23630717, page 87:

     'Tis the cruel gripe, / That lean hard-handed poverty inflicts, / The hope of better things, the chance to win, / The wiſh to ſhine, the thirſt to be amus'd, / That at the found of Winter's hoary wing, / Unpeople all our counties, of ſuch herds, / Of flutt'ring, loit'ring, cringing, begging, looſe, / And wanton vagrants, as make London, vaſt / And boundless as it is, a crowded coop.

   • 1850, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Montaigne; or, the Skeptic”, in Representative Men. Seven Lectures, London: George Routledge & Co., Soho Square, OCLC 934278539, page 94:

     Why think to shut up all things in your narrow coop, when we know there are not one or two only, but ten, twenty, a thousand things, and unlike?

   • 1929 September, Raoul F[alconia] Whitfield, “The Dog-Fight”, in Boys' Life, volume XIX, number 9, Irving, Tx.: Boy Scouts of America, ISSN 0006-8608, page 18:

     Lou Brent rolled from his cot, got to his feet on the floor of the tiny coop.

   • 1968, Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of the Underworld: British and American; being the Vocabularies of Crooks, Criminals, Racketeers, Beggars and Tramps, Convicts, the Commercial Underworld, the Drug Traffic, the White Slave Traffic, Spivs, 3rd edition, rev. and much enl., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, OCLC 311502654; republished as A Dictionary of the Underworld: British and American, Abingdon, Oxon.; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, ISBN 978-1-317-44552-4:

     coop. A (gen., from ca. 1880, a country-town) prison: 1785, Sessions Papers of the Old Bailey, Sept., p. 1111, 'He has been in coop for a week'; […]

4. (obsolete) A barrel or cask for holding liquids.
   • [1755, Samuel Johnson, “coop”, in A Dictionary of the English Language: In which the Words are Deduced from their Originals, and Illustrated in their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers, to which are Prefixed, a History of the Language, and an English Grammar. By Samuel Johnson, A.M. In Two Volumes, volume I (A–K), London: Printed by W[illiam] Strahan, for J[ohn] and P[aul] Knapton; T[homas] and T[homas] Longman; C. Hitch and L. Hawes; A[ndrew] Millar; and R[obert] and J[ames] Dodsley, OCLC 1637325:

     COOP. n. ſ. [kuype, Dutch.] 1. A barrel; a veſſel for the preſervation of liquids.]

   • [1832, Noah Webster, “coop”, in E[dmund] H[enry] Barker, editor, A Dictionary of the English Language [...] In Two Volumes. [...] Reprinted by E. H. Barker, Esq., of Thetford, Norfolk, from a Copy Communicated by the Author, and Containing Many Manuscript Corrections and Additions, volume I, 1st English edition, London: Printed by Black, Young, and Young, foreign booksellers to the King, 2 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, OCLC 7311811:

     COOP, n. […] 3. A barrel or cask for the preservation of liquors.]

• (enclosure for birds): chicken coop, hencoop, henhouse

coop (third-person singular simple present coops, present participle cooping, simple past and past participle cooped)

1. (transitive) To keep in a coop.
   • 1830, Bonington Moubray [pseudonym; John Lawrence], “Domestic Poultry, &c. &c.”, in A Practical Treatise on Breeding, Rearing, and Fattening All Kinds of Domestic Poultry, Pheasants, Pigeons, and Rabbits; also the Management of Swine, Milch Cows, and Bees; and Instructions for the Private Brewery, 6th edition, London: Printed for Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, Paternoster-Row, OCLC 562628131, page 43:

     Generally, and dependent on situation, and the disposition of the hen, there is no necessity for cooping the brood beyond two or three days, but they may be confined as occasion requires or suffered to range, as they are much benefited by the scratching and foraging of the hen.

   • 1867, Elizabeth Watts, Poultry: An Original and Practical Guide to Their Breeding, Rearing, Feeding, and Exhibiting, London: Frederick Warne & Co., OCLC 679339173, page 41:

     Under a shed, where the ground is clean dust mixed with small stones, is a good place for cooping the hen for the first ten days or so; and she may after that be placed on the grass in dry weather, but not before the dew is off it.

   • 1917, Sessional Papers – Legislature of the Province of Ontario, Toronto: Legislative Assembly of Ontario, OCLC 243875101, page 52:

     It is always easy to find fault and suggest ways of improvement, but one does not always know the local circumstances, hence what I have to say will be along lines of general suggestions as to changes in the prize list, method of cooping and the building for cooping the birds.

   • 1957, A. E. Information Series, Raleigh, N.C.: Department of Agricultural Economics, North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station, OCLC 20177860, page 13:

     When weight losses are compared for on-truck cooping with bulk weighing and on-ground cooping with farm weighing, the following facts should be kept in mind: weight loss of the flock begins when access to feed and water is shut off […]

2. (transitive) To shut up or confine in a narrow space; to cramp.
   • 1706, John Locke, “Of the Conduct of the Understanding”, in Posthumous works of Mr. John Locke: viz. I. Of the Conduct of the Understanding. II. An Examination of P. Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing All Things in God. III. A Discourse of Miracles. IV. Part of a Fourth Letter for Toleration. V. Memoirs Relating to the Life of Anthony First Earl of Shaftsbury. To which is Added, VI. His New Method of a Common-Place-Book, Written Originally in French, and Now Translated into English, London: Printed by W. B. for A. and J. Churchill at the Black Swan in Pater-Noster-Row; republished in The Works of John Locke. In Ten Volumes, volume III, 10th edition, London: Printed for J[oseph] Johnson [et al.], 1801, OCLC 53106290, page 223:

     But the contempt of all other knowledge, as if it were nothing in comparison of law or physic, of astronomy or chemistry, or perhaps some yet meaner part of knowledge, wherein I have got some smattering, or am somewhat advanced, is not only the mark of a vain or little mind; but does this prejudice in the conduct of the understanding, that it coops it up within narrow bounds, and hinders it from looking abroad into other provinces of the intellectual world, […]

   • [1788?], Virgil, “The Second Book of the Æneid”, in William Henry Melmoth, editor, The Whole Genuine Works of Virgil, the Famous Roman Poet: Including New and Complete Editions of The Æneid, Georgics, and Pastorals, Bucolics, or Eclogues; Those Very Celebrated and Universally-admired Original Productions, London: Printed by Alex. Hogg, at the King's Arms, No. 16, Paternoster-Row, page 28:

     The Trojans coop'd within their walls ſo long, / Unbar their gates, and iſſue in a throng, / Like ſwarming bees, and with delight ſurvey / The camp deſerted where the Grecians lay; […]

   • 2004, Amanda Rees, The Great Plains Region (Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures), Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, →ISBN, page 213:

     The hard hearted villains cooped the cowboy up in a barrel and rolled him out on the prairie to die of thirst and starvation.

3. (transitive, intransitive, politics, historical) To unlawfully confine one or more voters to prevent them from casting their ballots in an election.
   • 1838, Richard Mackenzie Bacon, A Memoir of the Life of Edward, Third Baron Suffield, Norwich, Norfolk: Not published; printed by Bacon, Kinnebrook, and Bacon, OCLC 30899646, page 70:

     In 1819, one of those municipal contests for the election of the Common Council happened, and it was attended with that profuse expenditure of money in direct bribery, cooping, treating, and in short in all the modes of demoralizing the classes exposed to such influence, which were the disgraceful distinctions of those elections.

   • 1953, Norman Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel: A Study in the Technique of Parliamentary Representation, 1830–1850, London; New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green, OCLC 309702:

     At Cambridge in the 1835 election it was reported that 'the worst features of the old system were maintained of cooping and taking away voters and keeping them drunk'. Cooping of the more unpleasant kind consisted in abducting the supporters of an opponent and keeping them out of the way until the election was over. Someone who had contested the borough of Lewes at more than one election remarked that 'one very expensive part of the Lewes election is putting the town in a state of siege, which we are forced to do to prevent carrying off of voters'. The first variety of cooping was of course often a safeguard against the second.

4. (intransitive, law enforcement, slang) Of a police officer: to sleep or relax while on duty. [from 1960s.]
   • 2001, Mitchel P. Roth, Historical Dictionary of Law Enforcement, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, →ISBN, pages 76–77:

     COOPING. The term cooping refers to police officers sleeping on duty. […] One critic of two-man squad cars suggests that this is a recipe for cooping, since one officer can drive while the other sleeps.

   • 2010, Bill Kovach; Tom Rosenstiel, Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury USA, →ISBN, page 155:

     One of his first, and most groundbreaking, stories was about "cooping," police slang for sleeping on duty. It was sparked when Burnham interviewed Jim Curran, then a New York City policeman, who referred to someone being "in the coop," Burnham recalled. […] Burnham heard that every day thousands upon thousands of New York police supposedly working the night shift were actually sleeping, stashed in coops all over the city, only to be awakened if a crime was discovered. […] Cooping was a natural result and a dramatic example of a city agency misusing its resources.

   • 2012, Walter Block, Defending the Undefendable: The Pimp, Prostitute, Scab, Slumlord, Libeler, Moneylender, and Other Scapegoats in the Rogue's Gallery of American Society, Baltimore, Md.: Laissez Faire Books, →ISBN:

     The majority of policemen, […] act so as to save the public from harm, i.e., they shun their duties. Instead of being up and about, interfering with the rights of the people, many policemen choose the honorable way out—they coop. Cooping (sleeping in some out-of-the-way place while on duty) was a situation which enraged [Frank] Serpico. In the finest tradition of the busybody who insists on running other people's lives, Serpico insisted on being out on the streets at all hours, stopping a prostitute here, ambushing a gambler there, harassing drug merchants everywhere.

   • 2012, Jeffrey Ian Ross, Policing Issues: Challenges and Controversies, Sudbury, Mass.: Jones & Bartlett Learning, →ISBN, page 66:

     This cynicism may lead to an increased number of job actions and deviance, such as the "blue flu" or "cooping."

   • 2015, Steven V. Gilbert; Barbara A. Gilbert, Police Corruption in the NYPD: From Knapp to Mollen, Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, →ISBN, pages 116–117:

     Cooping-prone areas are those locations where officers tend to engage in non-police activities that interrupt patrols in an unauthorized manner. A variety of such locations can be surmised, such as spending time at home or other locations not in the officer's area of responsibility while on duty. The department provided the example of officers parking in desolate areas to sleep.

5. (transitive, obsolete) To make or repair barrels, casks and other wooden vessels; to work upon in the manner of a cooper.
   • 2006, Cathal J. Nolan, The Age of Wars of Religion, 1000–1650: An Encyclopedia of Global Warfare and Civilization (Greenwood Encyclopedias of Modern World Wars), volume I (A–K), Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, →ISBN, page 413:

     When two dozen or more rings of iron were assembled around lengths of iron in this way they created a type of simple tube, termed a "barrel" from its manufacturing origin in cooping.

   • 2011, Joke Spaans, “Fortune-seekers and Rebels”, in Graphic Satire and Religious Change: The Dutch Republic 1676–1707 (Religious History and Culture Series; 5), Leiden; Boston, Mass.: Brill Publishers, →ISBN, pages 93–94:

     To the left [of the print] is a group of three figures around a collapsing barrel. […] The barrel disintegrates into its constituent staves, literally translating into picture the Dutch expression 'in duigen vallen' (to become utterly undone). Earlier we saw that cooping a barrel stands for forging a conspiracy—here we see the opposite. Whereas in the other Dominicus-cartoons we see a cooper hammering the hoops in place around the barrel, here, in a very similar gesture, the hoops are being cut.

• coop up

Possibly from coop, above. Sense 2 may be from English coup (“to tilt, overturn, upset”).

• coup

• (Sense 1): (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /kuːp/
• (Sense 2): (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /kaʊp/

coop (plural coops)

1. (regional, England, Scotland) A cart with sides and ends made from boards, enabling it to carry manure, etc.
   • 1794, “The lamb-leader” [pseudonym; William Anderson], The Piper of Peebles. A Tale, Dundee: Printed by T. Colvill for the author, OCLC 84798703, page 5:

     Fan Coops an' Carts were unco rare, / An' Creels, an' Corrocks boot to ſair. […]

2. (regional, England, Scotland) A cart which opens at the back to release its load; a tumbril.
   • [1825, John Jamieson, “COOP”, in Supplement to the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language: […] In Two Volumes, volume I (A–J), Edinburgh: Printed at the University Press; for W[illiam] & C[harles] Tait, […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, OCLC 863495133, page 248, column 1:

     COOP, […] A cart, the box of which moves upon its shafts by hinges, by which means it may be emptied of its load without unyoking the horse, S. "The body of the cowp-cart is attached to the shafts by a peculiar kind of hinges, which allow of elevating it before, either partially or entirely, to facilitate the discharge of its load backwards, either by degrees into small heaps, or at once, without the trouble of unyoking the shaft horse." Agr. Surv. of Berw. p. 167. As used in the latter sense, the term is obviously from the v. to Coup, to overturn.]

Origin uncertain; compare English cop (“top, summit (especially of a hill); head”).

coop (plural coops)

1. (Scotland) A small heap.
   • [1825, John Jamieson, “coop”, in Supplement to the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language: Illustrating the Words in their Different Significations, by Examples from Ancient and Modern Writers; Shewing their Affinity to Those of Other Languages, and Especially the Northern; Explaining Many Terms, which, though Now Obsolete in England, were Formerly Common to Both Countries; and Elucidating National Rites, Customs, and Institutions, in their Analogy to Those of Other Nations. [...] In Two Volumes, volume I (A–JUX), Edinburgh: Printed at the University Press; for W[illiam] & C[harles] Tait, 78, Prince's Street; and Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, London, OCLC 863495133, page 248:

     COOP, s[ubstantive] A small heap, as, "A coop of muck," a heap of dung; Lanarks[hire].]

From cooperative, by shortening.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈkəʊ.ɒp/
• (General American) enPR: kōŏp, IPA^(key): /ˈkoʊ.ɑp/
• Hyphenation: co‧op

coop (plural coops)

1. Alternative form of co-op.

• OPOC, POCO

coop f (plural coops)

1. Abbreviation of cooperativa.