coo

Etymology

It imitates the soft murmuring call of doves and pigeons.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Skeat and Weekley note an earlier spelling croo,^[7][8] and Weekley compares French roucouler, with the same double form as French verbs for the raven and the frog.^[8] Etymonline compares Danish kurre and German girren, which have the same sense.^[3] The noun is formed from the verb.^[2][5] The British interjection of surprise, recorded from 1911, is of uncertain origin: the OED suggests that it may be a variant of cor,^[2] the Shorter Oxford and the “Oxford Dictionary of English” call it imitative,^[9][10] and Merriam-Webster gives its origin as unknown.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of doves and pigeons, to make their soft murmuring sound: in Dryden's The Conquest of Granada, dated 1670 by Barnhart and 1672 by the OED.^[5][2] Etymonline dates it to the 1660s,^[3] while Merriam-Webster gives 1577 as its first known use.^[11]

Semantic evolution

From 1736 the verb was used of a person, especially a baby, making a similar sound,^[2][5] and since 1798 transitively, to utter something by cooing.^[2][3] The sense of talking caressingly or amorously is recorded from 1816, in a letter of Byron's, and is usually found in the phrase bill and coo;^[2][3] Byron's verses to Thomas Moore of the same year rhyme "billing or cooing".^[3] Johnson (1755) defined it as "to cry as a dove or pigeon", quoting Thomson's stock-dove that "only through the forest cooes".^[6] The noun is recorded from 1729.^[2][5][3] In Scotland coo was also a call to pigeons, and coo-me-doo a pet name for a wood pigeon or a turtle dove.^[12] The British slang interjection coo!, expressing surprise or disbelief, appears in Punch in 1911.^[2][9]

Timeline

• 1670 – to make the soft sound of a dove.^[5] The OED dates its first quotation, from the same play, to 1672.^[5][2]
• 1729 – noun, the sound of a dove.^[2][5]
• 1736 – of a person, to make a sound like a dove.^[2][5]
• 1798 – transitive, to utter by cooing.^[2][3]
• 1816 – to talk lovingly, in bill and coo.^[2][3]
• 1911 – interjection expressing surprise.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. Of a dove or pigeon, to make its soft, low, murmuring call.^[13][11][2]
2. Of a person, especially a baby, to make a similar soft sound.^[11][2][9]
3. To say something in a soft, murmuring voice: “Isn't he lovely,” she cooed over the cot.^[13][2]
4. To talk fondly or amorously, especially in bill and coo.^[13][11][2]

Noun

1. The soft murmuring call of a dove or pigeon, or a sound like it.^[13][11][2]

Interjection

1. (British, slang) An exclamation of surprise or wonder.^{[13][11][2][9]}

Word family

• cooer
• cooingly

Related words

• cor
• bill and coo

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
7. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
9. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
13. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins