wooer
English
Etymology
woo + -er; from Middle English wowere, from Old English wōgere, from wōgian (“to woo”).
Pronunciation
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈwu.ɚ/
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈwuː.ə/
- Rhymes: -uːə(ɹ)
Noun
wooer (plural wooers)
- Someone who woos or courts.
- 1595, Edmund Spenser, Amoretti in Amoretti and Epithalamion, London: William Ponsonby, Sonnet 23,
- 1596-99?, William Shakespeare,The Merchant of Venice, Act I, scene ii:
- Whiles we shut the gate upon one wooer, another knocks at the door.
- 1748, Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, London, Volume 4, Letter 23, p. 120,
- She wrote such a widow-like refusal when she went from me, as might not exclude hope in any other wooer; whatever it may do in Mr. Tony Harlowe.
- 1848, Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, Chapter 8,
- Sally Leadbitter was vulgar-minded to the last degree; never easy unless her talk was of love and lovers; in her eyes it was an honour to have had a long list of wooers.
- 1928, Dorothy Parker, “For a Favorite Granddaughter” in Sunset Gun, Garden City, NY: Sun Dial, p. 62,
- Never hold your heart in pain
- For an evil-doer;
- Never flip it down the lane
- To a gifted wooer.
- 1997, Saul Bellow, The Actual, New York: Viking, p. 20,
- She was, I think, the only girl I ever called on. I wasn’t much of a wooer. When I rang at her front door, her mother seemed taken aback. I should have been the dry cleaner’s messenger, picking up the blouses.
Translations
someone who woos or courts
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