Coop

How to spell coop

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce coop

What does coop mean?

1. nounA cage or pen for keeping poultry such as chickens or rabbits.
2. verbTo shut up or confine someone or something in a cramped space, usually followed by 'up'.

Coop in a sentence

• noun

  Every morning she let the hens out of the coop to roam the yard.

• verb

  The storm forced the family to coop up indoors for three days.

• noun

  The fox managed to get inside the chicken coop overnight.

• verb

  Working from a tiny flat, he felt the walls coop him in.

Where does coop come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to a container for storing things rather than a structure for birds. It traces to the Old English cype, meaning a basket or wicker cage, which itself was shaped by the Latin cupa, meaning a cask, tub, or barrel; the same Latin root lies behind the words 'cup' and 'cupola'. In Middle English the form 'coupe' or 'cowpe' came to mean a wicker pen for keeping poultry, and by the 1500s the spelling settled toward 'coop' as the enclosure where hens were confined. The verb sense, meaning to shut up or confine in a cramped space, grew naturally out of the noun during the same period. Because the double 'o' represents a single long vowel, writers sometimes confuse it with the unrelated 'coup' (a sudden seizure of power) and 'coupe' (a car or dish), even though those came into English much later from French.

How the word is built

• coop (from Old English cype/Latin cupa: cask, basket, container)

Words that sound like coop

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

• coupe: A car with a fixed roof, a sloping back, and usually two doors.