# zoo

Pronunciation: say "ZOO" /zuː/

## Noun

1. A park where live animals are kept and exhibited to the public.
   - Simple: A park where live animals are kept for people to come and see.
   - _The city zoo opened a new rainforest exhibit with sloths and jaguars._
   - _Many zoos now breed endangered species and return some of them to the wild._
2. Any place where things are wild, crowded, or chaotic. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: A place that is wild, crowded, or full of confusion.
   - _The airport was a zoo on the Friday before Thanksgiving._
   - _With three toddlers and a new puppy, their house is a total zoo._
3. A large, mixed collection of things of many different kinds. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: A big group of many different kinds of things.
   - _Physicists in the 1950s faced a growing zoo of new particles that no theory could explain._
   - _The software has a bewildering zoo of settings, and hardly anyone touches most of them._
4. The jungle, especially as the setting of military patrols and combat. *(slang, US)*
   - Simple: The jungle, especially when soldiers are patrolling or fighting in it.
   - _After a week in the zoo, the patrol came back soaked, exhausted, and covered in leech bites._
   - _The new lieutenant had never been out in the zoo, and it showed on his first patrol._

## Other meanings

- (noun) Clipping of zoophile.
- (noun) Pornographic material depicting actual animals or bestiality.

## Origin

A clipping of zoological garden or zoological park, and now the usual form; see zoology. The sense relating to zoophilia is a separate clipping, of zoophile or zoophilia.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/zoo (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).