Word.ws English Dictionary

coonery

coonery noun: the behavior of a "coon"; in present usage now typically meaning a black person who behaves in a subservient way to whites.

Noun

coonery (uncountable)

  1. (derogatory, ethnic, slur) The behavior of a "coon"; in present usage now typically meaning a black person who behaves in a subservient way to whites
    • Spike Lee
      I think there's a lot of stuff out today that is coonery and buffoonery
    • While a Stepin Fetchit movie, a Jimmie Walker sitcom, or a Flavor Flav reality show may have earned charges of coonery, they also brought laughter and pride to black viewers who at some level appreciate that these artists demonstrate[…]2012 August 27, Yuval Taylor, Jake Austen, Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop, W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, page 20

Origin of coonery

From coon + -ery.

Questions about coonery

What does coonery mean?
Coonery means the behavior of a "coon"; in present usage now typically meaning a black person who behaves in a subservient way to whites.
What part of speech is coonery?
Coonery is a noun.

Words near coonery in the dictionary

  1. coondogs
  2. cooned
  3. cooned it
  4. Cooner
  5. Cooners
  6. coonery
  7. Coones
  8. Cooney
  9. Cooneys
  10. Cooneys Creek
  11. coonfuse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: coonery (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: “coonery.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/coonery. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.