Word.ws English Dictionary

fly the coop

fly the coop verb: to depart hastily or unannounced; to escape or flee.

Verb

fly the coop (third-person singular simple present flies the coop, present participle flying the coop, simple past flew the coop, past participle flown the coop)

  1. (figuratively) To depart hastily or unannounced; to escape or flee.
    • Not liking the accommodations, I took the first chance and flew the coop.1910, William MacLeod Raine, chapter 3, in A Texas Ranger
    • By the time the disk was out, most of Smith had apparently flown the coop; only Gayle and Jerry remained1990, Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, →ISBN, page 243
  2. To escape from a pen or similar enclosure.
    • Explained a Curtiz assistant: "We had three ravens in Assisi; one died of cold, and another flew the coop."1961 January 6, “Assisi Revisited”, in Time

Forms of fly the coop

third-person singular presentflies the coop
present participleflying the coop
pastflew the coop
past participleflown the coop

Origin of fly the coop

From fly, to flee or run away, + coop, an enclosure for birds.

Questions about fly the coop

What does fly the coop mean?
Fly the coop means to depart hastily or unannounced; to escape or flee.
What part of speech is fly the coop?
Fly the coop is a verb.
What is the past tense of fly the coop?
The past tense of fly the coop is flew the coop.

Words near fly the coop in the dictionary

  1. fly swatter
  2. fly swatters
  3. fly system
  4. fly systems
  5. fly the blue pigeon
  6. fly the coop
  7. fly the flag
  8. fly the freak flag
  9. fly the kite
  10. fly the nest
  11. fly too close to the sun

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fly the coop (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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