Etymologically
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coo

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Pronunciation

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
  • 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