coop

A basket, pen or enclosure for birds or small animals.

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."

A wickerwork basket (kipe) or other enclosure for catching fish.

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, […]

A narrow place of confinement, a cage; a jail, a prison.

'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?

A barrel or cask for holding liquids.

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.

An obstacle for a horse to jump over, shaped like an A-frame.

To keep in a coop.

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.

To shut up or confine in a narrow space; to cramp.

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; […]

To unlawfully confine one or more voters to prevent them from casting their ballots in an election.

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.

Of a police officer: to sleep or relax while on duty.

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.

To make or repair barrels, casks and other wooden vessels; to work upon in the manner of a cooper.

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.

A cart with sides and ends made from boards, enabling it to carry manure, etc.

Fan Coops an' Carts were unco rare, / An' Creels, an' Corrocks boot to ſair. […]

A cart which opens at the back to release its load; a tumbril.

COOP, […] A cart, the box of which moves upon its shafts by hinges, by which means it may be emptied of its load without unyoking the horse, S. "The body of the cowp-cart is attached to the shafts by a peculiar kind of hinges, which allow of elevating it before, either partially or entirely, to facilitate the discharge of its load backwards, either by degrees into small heaps, or at once, without the trouble of unyoking the shaft horse." Agr. Surv. of Berw. p. 167. As used in the latter sense, the term is obviously from the v. to Coup, to overturn.