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zoo

noun

Simple meaning

The facility where wild animals are housed for exhibition.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

zoo
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈzu

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. The facility where wild animals are housed for exhibition

  2. countable

    A park where live animals are exhibited.

  3. countableinformalfiguratively

    Any place that is wild, crowded, or chaotic.

  4. by extensionuncountable

    Pornographic material depicting actual animals or bestiality.

  5. countableinformalfiguratively

    A large and varied collection of something.

  6. countableinformal

    A person sexually attracted to non-human animals.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A2 · Elementary (estimated)
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
General English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: The facility where wild animals are housed for exhibition

Used this way, zoo is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Nearby words

  • zoological garden , more formal, and heavier in everyday conversation

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use zoo

  • “The children loved visiting the zoo to see the animals.”

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Sexually

human zoo

Large

city zoo

Other combinations

petting zoopark zoobronx zoonational zoozoo storysmall zoo

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • zoo keepernounCompound term

    The chief person responsible for a zoological garden.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: facility where wild animals are housed for exhibition

zoological gardenFormalmenagerie

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.