zooとは 意味・読み方・使い方

語源

Clipping of zoological garden or zoological park, now the usual form. See zoology.

Sense 5 is a clipping of zoophile or zoophilia.

発音

• IPA: /zuː/
• 韻: -uː

名詞

zoo (countable and uncountable, plural zoos)

1. (countable) A park where live animals are exhibited.

   The London Zoo was built in 1828.

   • 2013 July 26, Nick Miroff, “Mexico gets a taste for eating insects …”, in The Guardian Weekly‎, volume 189, number 7, page 32:

     The San Juan market is Mexico City's most famous deli of exotic meats, where an adventurous shopper can hunt down hard-to-find critters such as ostrich, wild boar and crocodile. Only the city zoo offers greater species diversity.

2. (countable, informal, figuratively) Any place that is wild, crowded, or chaotic.

   The shopping center was a zoo the week before Christmas.

3. (countable, informal, figuratively) A large and varied collection of something.
   • 1993, Neil P. Hurley, Soul in Suspense: Hitchcock's Fright and Delight, page xii:

     After his insightful book The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, Spoto published The Dark Side of Genius, a portrayal of the elderly director as a lonely man who was a veritable zoo of desires, suspicions, fears, and addictions (food, drink, romantic infatuation, and filmmaking).

   • 2001, Antonino Zichichi, Theory and Experiment Heading for New Physics:

     From this point on, an entire zoo of possibilities arose: strange stars, different families of neutron stars, hybrid stars, etc.

   • 2021, Michio Kaku, The God Equation:

     But powerful as the quark model and the electroweak theory were in describing the zoo of subatomic particles, this still left a huge gap.

4. (countable, US, military, slang) The jungle.
   • 2013 August 12, E. E. "Doc" Murdock, “My Vietnam War”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), →ISBN, page 152:

     I'm not all that unhappy about being out on an actual patrol, but there's a worried feeling wandering around the back of my mind, not exactly fear, more like a sort of lurking anxiety at being out in the dreaded jungle, the zoo, where the enemy hides.

5. (countable, informal) Clipping of zoophile.
   • 2013, Mark Hawthorne, Bleating Hearts: The Hidden World of Animal Suffering:

     Zoophiles, or 'zoos,' are sexually and emotionally attracted to animals, as in a sexual orientation.

   • 2016, Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets, page 129:

     Bestiality or zoophilia—whatever we decide to call it—is one of the most pressing issues for all domesticated animals, […] From the scanty research available, the following picture emerges: the majority of zoos are male, though certainly not all; […]

   1. (by extension, uncountable) Pornographic material depicting actual animals or bestiality.

派生語

関連する語

発音

• (英国発音) IPA: /ˈzəʊ.ə/, /ˈzəʊ.əʊ/
• (米国発音) IPA: /ˈzoʊ.ə/, /ˈzoʊ.oʊ/

接頭辞

zoo-

1. animal

使用する際の注意点

• Before a vowel, might contract to zo-.

派生語