zoon.
/zuː/, U.S. /zu/ 1.
a. Originally colloquial. A park or similar place in which wild animals are kept in enclosures for study, conservation, or display to the public. Cf. zoological garden n.Apparently first applied to the gardens of the Zoological Society of London at Regent's Park, which opened in 1828.The reference in quot. 1835 is to a fictional establishment, but the author states, ‘Getting up something of the same sort in London, I understand. Lost no time in taking our hint, eh..?’, with humorous allusion to the Regent's Park Zoo.Over time, the nature of the enclosures in which animals are kept in zoos has changed, and there is an increasing tendency to try to provide animals with greater space to roam, and habitats more closely resembling their natural terrain. In some cases this has led to establishments no longer being designated zoos: cf. safari park n. at safari n. Compounds 3, wildlife park n. at wild life n. Compounds 2.
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the world > food and drink > farming > animal husbandry > zoo > [noun]
vivarya1631
vivariumc1660
menagerie1676
zoological garden1827
zoological1831
zoo1835
park1887
paradise1900
petting zoo1965
1835 New Monthly Mag. Aug. 444 Our Zoo is just between the Vale of Health and the new burying-ground.
c1847 T. B. Macaulay in Life & Lett. (1878) II. 216 We treated the Clifton Zoo much too contemptuously.
1867 Punch 29 June 264/2 Everybody who is anybody goes on Sundays to the Zoo.
1906 Westm. Gaz. 30 Apr. 4/3 A nice example of Geoffroy's Cat may now be seen in the Small Mammals' House at the Zoo.
1940 J. Thurber Let. Apr. (2002) 329 I took her to the Central Park zoo, which she has always loved.
1964 Sci. News Let. 25 Jan. 60/2 A private zoo on Jersey in the Channel islands, which holds a collection of birds, animals and reptiles that civilization elsewhere threatens with extinction.
2007 Independent 21 July 29/2 After you've taken them to the zoo, to football matches, to a pizza house, where do you go?
b. A collection of animals of the sort maintained at such a location; (hence) any group of animals considered as particularly large or varied. Also figurative.
ΘΚΠ
the world > animals > animals collectively > [noun] > collection of different animals
happy family1824
zoo1910
1910 Evening Rev. (E. Liverpool, Ohio) 23 May 1/7 He has been purchasing a whole ‘zoo’ of animals to be placed in Rock Springs park for the season.
1928 Helena (Montana) Independent 22 Nov. 5/6 (advt.) Dolls that walk, talk, go to sleep and stand alone—a whole zoo of animals—mechanical toys of every kind.
1953 S. Chase Power of Words i. i. 9 The quarter inch of cortex has created..a dreadful zoo of verbal monsters.
1993 New Scientist 22 May 21/1 A hull that is left in the water all year, especially in warm waters, attracts a living zoo of barnacles, tubeworms, freshwater zebra mussels and other wildlife.
2001 Veranda July 116/3 There are five children and a zoo of animals.
2. In extended use.
a. Chiefly used somewhat contemptuously. A place where a large and diverse group of people assembles or can be found; a diverse group of this sort. Also: a place or situation considered to resemble a zoo in being noisy, chaotic, etc.
ΘΠ
society > inhabiting and dwelling > inhabited place > dwelling place or abode > place of resort > [noun] > place of assembly
forum1735
venue1857
folk-stead1876
zoo1885
whare puni1911
assembly-place1936
lapa1982
the world > space > relative position > arrangement or fact of being arranged > state of being gathered together > an assemblage or collection > [noun] > of people or animals > regarded as a whole or a body of people gathered > large or numerous > diverse
mob1688
zoo1885
1885 N.Y. World 23 Aug. 20/4 It is the human ‘zoo’ of Coney Island.
1915 McClure's Mag. Dec. 10/2 I was the principal object of attraction at the moment in Violet's zoo—I mean her convalescent home.
1917 T. S. Eliot Let. 23 Mar. (1988) I. 169 I was at a gathering of a curious zoo of people known as the Omega Club, and was sitting on a mat..discussing psychical research with William Butler Yeats.
1929 Jrnl. Royal Inst. Internat. Affairs 8 656 The country is shown to be a veritable ‘Zoo,’ and numerous shooting incidents are described.
1935 E. Blunden Edward Gibbon & his Age 14 He passed through Oxford, gathering little but materials for his future monody on a moribund zoo of dons.
1987 C. Willis Lincoln's Dreams (1991) i. 11 ‘There's a party upstairs,’ I said. ‘It's a kind of zoo, but...’
2008 South China Morning Post (Nexis) 19 Jan. 4 Without some kind of obedience, 40 primary students would quickly turn the classroom into a zoo.
b. Any large and diverse body of things; a varied collection or assemblage.particle zoo: see particle n.
Π
1933 Newsweek 26 Aug. 32/1 Unlike many works on government, this book is a veritable zoo of lively examples and not at all a morgue for facts.
1956 Sci. News Let. 21 Apr. 244/1 Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer..coined the term ‘sub-nuclear zoo’, to describe the particles which are the ‘atom's strange offspring’.
1969 Mind 78 461 A whole zoo of platitudes and high-flown circularities masquerading as general laws.
1990 J. Gribbin & M. Rees Cosmic Coincidences (1991) vi. 161 By then, hundreds of quasars and quasarlike objects had been discovered, and the catalogues contained a whole zoo of objects with a confusing array of names.
2004 Mod. Lang. Rev. 99 281 Scott's ‘phrasal analysis’ reveals a veritable zoo of amphibrachs, amphimacers, and antibacchic feet.
Compounds
C1. General attributive, as zoo animal, zoo collection, zoo director, etc.
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1876 N.-Y. Times 29 June 7/1 We have a large ‘zoo’ collection already secured. There are five of the North American eagles [etc.].
1906 Westm. Gaz. 24 Dec. 4/1 An African thumbless monkey is among the recent additions to the ‘Zoo’ menagerie.
1931 Fortune Aug. 12/3 The okapi, a kind of giraffe, is the rarest zoo animal.
1955 Times 16 Aug. 4/2 It is not yet known how the zoo budgerigars caught the disease.
1976 A. Davis Television 119 There were zoo programmes and the travelogues of Armand and Michaela Denis.
1984 G. Sandler Baltimore Glimpses Revisited 33 Betsey's art career was the brainchild of zoo director Arthur Watson.
1992 Zoo Life Winter 100/1 Mhorr gazelles are among the nearly 4,000 animals in 100 acres of one of the world's rarest zoo collections.
2013 New Yorker 2 Sept. 28/3 Handling zoo animals this way began in the nineteen-eighties.
C2.
zoo-crazy adj. having a passionate enthusiasm for zoos.
Π
1938 L. MacNeice Zoo iv. 71 A curate who was Anglo-Catholic..and..zoo-crazy.
2014 Moment Mar. 55/2 She landed on a blog run by a zoo-crazy high school student.
zookeeper n. a person responsible for taking care of the animals in a zoo; (sometimes also) the owner, director, or person in overall charge of a zoo.
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the world > food and drink > farming > animal husbandry > zoo > [noun] > keeper
menagerist1850
zooman1871
zookeeper1886
zoowoman1930
1886 Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago) 3 Nov. 2 It could be nursed and fed on warm milk..if Zoo keepers will have an eye to it.
1910 E. P. Butler Water Goats & Other Troubles 19 Zoo is getting too crowded with all kinds of animals and I don't need so many dongola goats. I will sell you two for fifty dollars..Dennis Toole, Zoo keeper.
1977 Monitor (McAllen, Texas) 17 July 2 f/4 Zookeepers caring for a two-week-old orphaned hippopotamus have taken to..wading into a pool..to nurse the hippo from a bottle.
1991 Sunday Times (Nexis) 2 June (Overseas news section) The eccentric British millionaire zoo-keeper and former casino owner.
2009 Daily Tel. 7 Aug. 11/8 Zookeepers have helped hatch the eggs of one of the world's rarest species of turtle.
zookeeping n. the management of a zoo; the work of a zookeeper.
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1929 Catholic World Jan. 438/1 The speaker..excoriated the keepers and directors of the animal exhibit as mere..ex-saloon keepers whose knowledge of Zoo-keeping stopped with their mastery of the art of drawing salaries.
1993 New Scientist 16 Oct. 44/1 Bostock's book is an unusual combination of zookeeping and philosophy which seeks to address what he terms the ‘special challenge to zoos’: the right to freedom for animals.
2001 Y. Martel Life of Pi (2002) ix. 39 Getting animals used to the presence of humans is at the heart of the art and science of zookeeping.
zooman n. a person (esp. a man) who works in, manages, or is associated with a zoo; a male zookeeper; an animal handler.
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the world > food and drink > farming > animal husbandry > zoo > [noun] > keeper
menagerist1850
zooman1871
zookeeper1886
zoowoman1930
1871 Fun 7 Jan. 13/2 Inhuman Zoomen... The members of the Zoological Society.
1973 Times Lit. Suppl. 9 Mar. 262/4 The increasing value of the Yearbook to zoomen and biologists.
2006 Sydney Morning Herald 9 Aug. 22 The late English zooman Gerald Durrell.
zoowoman n. rare a woman who works in, manages, or is associated with a zoo; a female zookeeper or animal handler.
ΘΚΠ
the world > food and drink > farming > animal husbandry > zoo > [noun] > keeper
menagerist1850
zooman1871
zookeeper1886
zoowoman1930
1930 Time 13 Oct. 33/2 Conspicuous among the zoomen was the only zoowoman in the world.
1995 M. W. Rossiter Before Affirmative Action 246 An even better-known zoo woman was Belle Benchley of San Diego.
2012 B. Richards World Without Cats 129 The zoo woman told me that the three cats that died there had bacterial or viral infections.
Derivatives
ˈzooful n. a quantity (of animals) that would fill a zoo; (in extended use) a large group (of people), often characterized as boisterous, noisy, etc.
Π
1914 A. B. Spens Winter in India 52 A few of the Indians were apparently busy, but the great majority squatted in the sun, chattering like a zooful of monkeys.
1974 S. King Carrie (1975) 100 He's got a zooful of friends, too.
1991 D. Richler Kicking Tomorrow vi. 100 A school bus pulled up beside the schoolyard and disgorged a zooful of primary schoolers.
2011 Times (Nexis) 15 Oct. 32 Well-loved poet introduces a veritable zooful of real and imaginary animals.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2017; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
> see also
also refers to : zoo-comb. form
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n.1835see also