zoo

Noun

zoo (countable and uncountable, plural zoos)

1. (countable) A park where live animals are exhibited.
   • The London Zoo was built in 1828.
   • The San Juan market is Mexico City's most famous deli of exotic meats, where an adventurous shopper can hunt down hard-to-find critters such as ostrich, wild boar and crocodile. Only the city zoo offers greater species diversity.2013 July 26, Nick Miroff, “Mexico gets a taste for eating insects as chefs put bugs back on the menu”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 7, archived from the original on 26 Apr 2023, page 32
2. (countable, figuratively, informal) Any place that is wild, crowded, or chaotic.
   • The shopping center was a zoo the week before Christmas.
3. (countable, figuratively, informal) A large and varied collection of something.
   • After his insightful book The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, Spoto published The Dark Side of Genius, a portrayal of the elderly director as a lonely man who was a veritable zoo of desires, suspicions, fears, and addictions (food, drink, romantic infatuation, and filmmaking).1993, Neil P. Hurley, Soul in Suspense: Hitchcock's Fright and Delight, page xii
   • From this point on, an entire zoo of possibilities arose: strange stars, different families of neutron stars, hybrid stars, etc.2001, Antonino Zichichi, Theory and Experiment Heading for New Physics
4. (US, countable, slang) The jungle.
   • I'm not all that unhappy about being out on an actual patrol, but there's a worried feeling wandering around the back of my mind, not exactly fear, more like a sort of lurking anxiety at being out in the dreaded jungle, the zoo, where the enemy hides.2013 August 12, E. E. "Doc" Murdock, “My Vietnam War”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), →ISBN, page 152
5. (broadly, informal, uncountable) Pornographic material depicting actual animals or bestiality.