Word.ws English Dictionary

cooter

/ˈkutɚ/

cooter noun: a freshwater turtle of the eastern United States of the genus Pseudemys. Also the alternative form of couter.

Noun (1)

cooter (plural cooters)

  1. A freshwater turtle of the eastern United States of the genus Pseudemys.
  2. A box turtle.
  3. (slang) A redneck.

Noun (2)

cooter (plural cooters)

  1. (colloquial) Vagina or vulva.
    • There was a bright red tongue tattooed over most of her cooter and there was a thick, gold ring that had been pierced through her clit.2006, Tiva Wallon, A Donovan to Love, page 65

Proper noun capitalized: Cooter

Cooter (plural Cooters)

  1. A surname.

Also used as

cooter is also the alternative form of couter.

Forms of cooter

Noun
pluralcooters
Proper noun
pluralCooters

Origin of cooter

Borrowed from Gullah cootuh (“turtle”), from an African language, e.g. Bambara kuta (“turtle”). Attested in English from the 19th century.

Uncertain. Possibly identical to Etymology 1, above; compare clam, beaver. Alternatively, compare cooch from hootchy-kootchy.

See couter.

Questions about cooter

What does cooter mean?
Cooter means a freshwater turtle of the eastern United States of the genus Pseudemys.
What part of speech is cooter?
Cooter can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce cooter?
Cooter is pronounced /ˈkutɚ/.
What is the plural of cooter?
The plural of cooter is cooters.

Words near cooter in the dictionary

  1. cootch
  2. cootches
  3. cootchie-cootchie-coo
  4. Coote
  5. Cootehill
  6. cooter
  7. Cooter Brown
  8. cooters
  9. Cootes
  10. cootfoot
  11. cootfoots

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cooter (page history and authors); Cooter (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-cooter.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cooter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cooter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.