coon
/kun/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.07 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A member of a colorfully dressed dance troupe in Cape Town during New Year celebrations.
Informal
noun
A black person who "plays the coon"; that is, who plays the dated stereotype of a black fool for an audience, particularly including Caucasians.
Example Sentences
- "And that one looks Jewish, and that one's a coon! Who let all this riff-raff into the room?"
- "1865, Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod, Chapter IX. "The Sea and the Desert", page 187. He also said that minks, muskrats, foxes, coons, and wild mice were found there, but no squirrels."
- "How about a glen bong for you and your 'coon?"
- "‘Listen, Mr Du Toit,’ he said at last, in an obvious effort to sound light-hearted. ‘Why go to all this trouble for the sake of a bloody coon?’"
- "This is especially true when your audience has such high expectations of your playing the coon, and thus providing symbolic assurance that a darker people are contained in their assigned social "place" as "subpersons.""
- "There is a little ledge low on the face of the cliff, and by this with careful “cooning” one may reach a recession in the rock which makes a lovely arm chair."
Etymology
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /kun/
- British English: /kuːn/
Usage
- Derogatory
- Offensive
- Slang
- Informal
- American usage
- Dated
- Colloquial