coop
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: government
law-enforcement
politics
Etymology: 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 regional German Kufe f (“cask”)), probably from Latin cūpa, Medieval Latin cōpa (“cask”) (thus a doublet of coupe, cup, and keeve). 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”.
Inflected forms:
form: coops
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: coops
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: cooping
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: cooped
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: cooped
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A basket, pen or enclosure for birds or small animals.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
"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."
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?
gloss: A wickerwork basket (kipe) or other enclosure for catching fish.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
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, […]
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.
gloss: A narrow place of confinement, a cage; a jail, a prison.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
slang
examples: '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.
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?
Lou Brent rolled from his cot, got to his feet on the floor of the tiny coop.
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'; […]
gloss: A barrel or cask for holding liquids.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
examples: COOP. n. ſ. [kuype, Dutch.] 1. A barrel; a veſſel for the preſervation of liquids.
COOP, n. […] 3. A barrel or cask for the preservation of liquors.
gloss: An obstacle for a horse to jump over, shaped like an A-frame.
pos: noun
gloss: To keep in a coop.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: 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.
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.
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.
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 […]
gloss: To shut up or confine in a narrow space; to cramp.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: 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, […]
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; […]
The hard hearted villains cooped the cowboy up in a barrel and rolled him out on the prairie to die of thirst and starvation.
gloss: To unlawfully confine one or more voters to prevent them from casting their ballots in an election.
pos: verb
tags: historical
intransitive
transitive
examples: 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.
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.
gloss: Of a police officer: to sleep or relax while on duty.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
slang
examples: 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.
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.
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.
This cynicism may lead to an increased number of job actions and deviance, such as the "blue flu" or "cooping."
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.
gloss: To make or repair barrels, casks and other wooden vessels; to work upon in the manner of a cooper.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
transitive
examples: 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.
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.
Derived words: coopful
encoop
fly the coop
incoop
uncoop
coop in
coop up
hide and coop
Translations: