Word.ws English Dictionary

coonish

coonish adjective: characteristic of traditional racist stereotypes of black people.

Adjective

coonish (comparative more coonish, superlative most coonish)

  1. Characteristic of traditional racist stereotypes of black people.
    • Will Smith's early characterization of the Fresh Prince [The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, 1990-1996] was described as coonish clowning.2006, Stephanie Greco Larson, Media & Minorities: The Politics of Race in News and Entertainment
    • Both the novel and the film were accused of presenting coonish or demonizing representations of African American men.2010, Leslie M Alexander, Walter C. Rucker Jr., Encyclopedia of African American History, page 1106

Forms of coonish

comparativemore coonish
superlativemost coonish

Origin of coonish

From coon + -ish.

Questions about coonish

What does coonish mean?
Coonish means characteristic of traditional racist stereotypes of black people.
What part of speech is coonish?
Coonish is an adjective.

Words near coonish in the dictionary

  1. coonhound
  2. coonhounds
  3. Coonie
  4. cooning
  5. cooning it
  6. coonish
  7. coonishness
  8. coonjine
  9. coonjined
  10. coonjines
  11. coonjining

Source and license

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