Coo

How to spell coo

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce coo

What does coo mean?

1. verbTo make the soft, low murmuring sound characteristic of a dove or pigeon.
2. verbTo speak or murmur in a soft, loving, soothing way, especially over a baby.

Coo in a sentence

• The pigeons on the ledge coo at first light every morning.

• The new grandparents would coo over the baby for hours.

• A pair of doves would coo softly in the eaves behind our flat.

• She began to coo gently to settle the fretting infant.

Where does coo come from?

Language of origin: Other

Coo is an onomatopoeic word, meaning its very spelling was invented to imitate the soft, rounded murmur a pigeon or dove produces. It first appears in English in the late 1500s and early 1600s, alongside a small family of bird-sound words like 'cuckoo' that English coined by ear rather than borrowing from any older root. Because the sound itself is a low, drawn-out 'oo', writers settled on the double 'o' spelling to capture that lingering vowel, with the hard 'c' giving it a gentle opening. By the 1800s the word had stretched beyond birds to describe the tender, murmuring noises people make over babies or sweethearts, and the British exclamation 'coo!' of mild astonishment grew from the same vocal gesture. The whole point of the word is the sound, so the spelling stays simple and faithful to it.

How the word is built

• coo (a single imitative root; no prefix or suffix, the spelling mimics the soft sound a dove makes)

Words that sound like coo

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• coup: A sudden, usually violent and illegal seizure of power from a government.