Zoo

How to spell zoo

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce zoo

What does zoo mean?

1. nounA public park or facility where live animals are kept for viewing, study, and conservation.

Zoo in a sentence

• The children begged to visit the zoo on Saturday morning.

• The new zoo opened a spacious enclosure for its elephants.

Where does zoo come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word is a shortening of 'zoological garden', a phrase that came into use in London in the 1820s when the Zoological Society of London opened its menagerie to members. The 'zoo' element traces back to the Greek zoion, which simply meant 'a living being' or 'animal', itself related to zoe, meaning 'life'. By the 1840s Londoners had clipped the long, formal phrase down to the snappy single syllable 'zoo', and the abbreviation spread quickly through everyday speech. The same Greek root for living creatures still appears in words such as zoology, the study of animals, and protozoa, the tiny single-celled organisms. Although it looks unusual with its double 'o', the spelling is mercifully phonetic, so the only real surprise is how such a short word descends from a lengthy scientific title.

How the word is built

• zoo (from Greek zoion: animal), a clipped form of 'zoological garden'