coo

noun

1. The murmuring sound made by a dove or pigeon.

   “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. (broadly)An expression of pleasure made by a person.

   “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.”

3. (abbreviation, alt-of, initialism)Initialism of chief operating officer.

   “Atsme similarly protested when editors sought to portray Trump as racist by referring to a reconstructed and uncorroborated conversation in a book by a former COO at one of Trump’s companies, which attributes to Trump defamatory and racist remarks against black people.”

4. (abbreviation, alt-of, initialism)Initialism of country of origin.

verb

1. (ambitransitive)To make a soft murmuring sound, as a pigeon.

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

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

   “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?”

   “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.”

   “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.”

2. (intransitive)To speak in an admiring fashion, to be enthusiastic about.

   “They were too busy cooing over the baby and his parents were too busy cooing over each other.”

adj

1. (slang)Cool.

intj

1. An expression of approval, fright, surprise, etc.

   “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!”

   “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.”

   “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.”