Word.ws English Dictionary

bad for the coo

bad for the coo adjective: harmful to the weaker party in a conflict or collision.

Adjective

bad for the coo (not comparable)

  1. (dated, humorous) Harmful to the weaker party in a conflict or collision.
    • Had the comet which traversed them been of any respectable weight he would have made havoc among them and bouleversed their motions. But it was a case of locomotive and cow, and it was "very bad for the coo."1872, The Gentleman's Magazine (part 1, page 691)
    • "Boys, you must "make it bad for the coo."1893, Metal Worker, Plumber and Steam Fitter, page 49

Origin of bad for the coo

From a remark attributed to railway engineer George Stephenson, said to have been asked what would happen if one of the new steam locomotives ran into a cow, and to have replied that it would be "bad for the coo" (Scots for cow).

Questions about bad for the coo

What does bad for the coo mean?
Bad for the coo means harmful to the weaker party in a conflict or collision.
What part of speech is bad for the coo?
Bad for the coo is an adjective.

Words near bad for the coo in the dictionary

  1. bad eyes
  2. bad facts make bad law
  3. bad faith
  4. bad feeling
  5. bad feelings
  6. bad for the coo
  7. bad form
  8. Bad Gastein
  9. bad girl
  10. bad girls
  11. Bad Godesberg

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bad for the coo (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bad for the coo.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bad_for_the_coo. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.