cooping

Verb

coop (third-person singular simple present coops, present participle cooping, simple past and past participle cooped)

1. (transitive) To keep in a coop.
   • Generally, and dependent on situation, and the disposition of the hen, there is no necessity for cooping the brood beyond two or three days, but they may be confined as occasion requires or suffered to range, as they are much benefited by the scratching and foraging of the hen.1830, Bonington Moubray [pseudonym; John Lawrence], “Domestic Poultry, &c. &c.”, in A Practical Treatise on Breeding, Rearing, and Fattening All Kinds of Domestic Poultry, Pheasants, Pigeons, and...
2. (transitive) To shut up or confine in a narrow space; to cramp.
   • But the contempt of all other knowledge, as if it were nothing in comparison of law or physic, of astronomy or chemistry, or perhaps some yet meaner part of knowledge, wherein I have got some smattering, or am somewhat advanced, is not only the mark of a vain or little mind; but does this prejudice...1706, John Locke, “Of the Conduct of the Understanding”, in Posthumous works of Mr. John Locke: viz. I. Of the Conduct of the Understanding. II. An Examination of P. Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing...
3. (historical, intransitive, transitive) To unlawfully confine one or more voters to prevent them from casting their ballots in an election.
   • In 1819, one of those municipal contests for the election of the Common Council happened, and it was attended with that profuse expenditure of money in direct bribery, cooping, treating, and in short in all the modes of demoralizing the classes exposed to such influence, which were the disgraceful...1838, Richard Mackenzie Bacon, A Memoir of the Life of Edward, Third Baron Suffield, Norwich, Norfolk: Not published; printed by Bacon, Kinnebrook, and Bacon, →OCLC, page 70
4. (intransitive, slang) Of a police officer: to sleep or relax while on duty.
   • COOPING. The term cooping refers to police officers sleeping on duty. […] One critic of two-man squad cars suggests that this is a recipe for cooping, since one officer can drive while the other sleeps.2001, Mitchel P. Roth, Historical Dictionary of Law Enforcement, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, →ISBN, pages 76–77
5. (obsolete, transitive) To make or repair barrels, casks and other wooden vessels; to work upon in the manner of a cooper.
   • When two dozen or more rings of iron were assembled around lengths of iron in this way they created a type of simple tube, termed a "barrel" from its manufacturing origin in cooping.2006, Cathal J. Nolan, The Age of Wars of Religion, 1000–1650: An Encyclopedia of Global Warfare and Civilization (Greenwood Encyclopedias of Modern World Wars), volumes I (A–K), Westport, Conn....

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