different between coon vs hound

English

Etymology

Clipping of raccoon, itself a shortening of arocoun, from Powhatan.

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /kun/
• Rhymes: -u?n

Noun

coon (plural coons)

1. (ethnic slur) A black person.

2. (informal, chiefly Southern US) A raccoon.
   • 1865, Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod, Chapter IX. "The Sea and the Desert", page 187.

     He also said that minks, muskrats, foxes, coons, and wild mice were found there, but no squirrels.

   • 1963 Sterling North, Rascal, Avon Books (softcover), p 100:

     How about a glen bong for you and your 'coon?

   • 1979, André Brink, A Dry White Season, Vintage 1998, page 149:

     ‘Listen, Mr Du Toit,’ he said at last, in an obvious effort to sound light-hearted. ‘Why go to all this trouble for the sake of a bloody coon?’

3. (informal, South Africa) A member of a colourfully dressed dance troupe in Cape Town during New Year celebrations.
4. (Southern US, ethnic slur) A coonass; a white Acadian French person who lives in the swamps.
5. (US, dated) A sly fellow.
6. (African-American Vernacular) A black person who "plays the coon"; that is, who plays the dated stereotype of a black fool for an audience, particularly including Caucasians.

Derived terms

Verb

coon (third-person singular simple present coons, present participle cooning, simple past and past participle cooned)

1. (Southern US, colloquial) To hunt raccoons.
2. (climbing) To traverse by crawling, as a ledge.
3. (Southern US, colloquial) To crawl while straddling, especially in crossing a creek.
   • a. 1917, Roger Martin, “The Parson Goes A-Fishing”, Outing, W. B. Holland, volume LXIX, page 216:

     There is a little ledge low on the face of the cliff, and by this with careful “cooning” one may reach a recession in the rock which makes a lovely arm chair.

   • 1957, The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, volume XVI, Arkansas Historical Association:

     2 o'clock we float up to Duvall's landing—high bluff, store house, and a few dwelling houses. Here the fleet stops. Now for a canter through the woods, cooning logs, and waiding sloughs. Slosh across a small prairie.

   • 1982, Edwin Van Syckle, The River Pioneers, Early Days on Grays Harbor, Pacific Search Press, page 186:

     “Advertising” was one problem for frontier women. Another was having to “coon” across a fallen tree that had been felled and limbed to bridge a canyon or gully.

4. (Georgia, colloquial) To fish by noodling, by feeling for large fish in underwater holes.
5. (African-American Vernacular, of an African-American) To play the dated stereotype of a black fool for an audience, particularly including Caucasians.
   • 1999, Nelson George, Elevating the Game, Black Men and Basketball, U of Nebraska Press, ?ISBN, page 52:

     If any other forties figure paralleled this humorous, graceful man in appeal it was the dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who, like the Trotter, funneled his extraordinary physical gifts into mass entertainment for whites yet remarkably, considering the time, avoided cooning.

   • 2005, Kermit Ernest Campbell, “gettin’ our groove on”, rhetoric, language, and literacy for the hip hop generation, Wayne State University Press, ?ISBN, page 80:

     From the classic toasts to the dirty dozens to the early blues⁵⁰ and now to gangsta rap lyrics—why not consider it all just a bunch of niggers cooning for the white man’s delight and dollars?

   • 2006, A. Khaulid, The Great Book of Fire, Damon Hunter, ?ISBN, page 142:

     Then the warrior appeared, in a manner that was dead serious as a heart attack wearing a baseball cap. Then came the sidekick, a jet black madman dancing, and almost cooning out of the shadows that cancelled him.

6. (Southern US, colloquial, dated) To steal.
   • 1940, John W. “Jack” Ganzhorn, I’ve Killed Men, Robert Hale Limited, page 58:

     Cooning water-melons [sic.] was a common custom, and young people would go out at night on such parties. To prevent any raids on our melon patch Grandfather set a trap alarm—which brought disaster.

   • 1968, Bill Adler (compiler), Jay David (editor), Growing Up Black, Morrow, page 200:

     In the summertime, at night, in addition to all the other things we did, some of us boys would slip out down the road, or across the pastures and go “cooning” watermelons.

   • 2006, Timothy M. Gay, Tris Speaker, The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend, U of Nebraska Press, ?ISBN, page 37:

     Tris and his gang loved to prowl around at night, “cooning melons,” as Speaker put it in a 1920 interview. By all accounts, young Master Speaker was a handful.

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:coon.

Derived terms

• coon it

References

• 2005, John R. Waldman, 100 Weird Ways to Catch Fish, Stackpole Books, ?ISBN

Anagrams

• Ocon, cono-, onco-

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ha?nd/
• Rhymes: -a?nd

Etymology 1

From Middle English hound, from Old English hund, from Proto-West Germanic *hund, from Proto-Germanic *hundaz. Cognate with West Frisian hûn, Dutch hond, Luxembourgish Hond, German Hund, German Low German Hund, Danish hund, Faroese hundur, Icelandic hundur, Norwegian Bokmål hund, Norwegian Nynorsk hund, and Swedish hund), from pre-Germanic *?untós (compare Latvian sùnt-ene (“big dog”), enlargement of Proto-Indo-European *?w? (“dog”) (compare Welsh cwn (“dogs”), Tocharian B ku, Lithuanian šuõ, Armenian ???? (šun), Russian ???? (suka). Doublet of canine.

Noun

hound (plural hounds)

1. A dog, particularly a breed with a good sense of smell developed for hunting other animals.
2. Any canine animal.
3. (by extension) Someone who seeks something.
   • 1996, Marc Parent, Turning Stones, Harcourt Brace & Company, ?ISBN, page 93,

     On the way out of the building I was asked for my autograph. If I'd known who the signature hound thought I was, I would've signed appropriately.

   • 2004, Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper, Simon & Schuster, ?ISBN, page 483

     I still do not know if he's taken on this case because he's a glory hound, because he wants the PR, or if he simply wanted to help Anna.

4. (by extension) A male who constantly seeks the company of desirable women.
   • 1915, Norman Duncan, "A Certain Recipient", in Harper's, volume 122, number 787, December 1915, republished in Harper's Monthly Magazine, volume 122, December 1915 to May 1916, page 108,

     "Are you alone, Goodson? […] I thought, perhaps, that the […] young woman, Goodson, who supplanted Mary?" […]

     "She had a good many successors, John."

     "You are such a hound, in that respect, Goodson," said Claywell, "and you have always been such a hound, that it astounds me to find you—unaccompanied."

5. A despicable person.
   • 1973, Elizabeth Walter, Come and Get Me and Other Uncanny Invitations

     'You blackmailing hound,' the parrot said distinctly, in what Hodges recognized as General Derby's voice. Anstruther turned pale.

6. A houndfish.

Usage notes

• In more recent times, hound has been replaced by Modern English dog but the sense remains the same.

Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English hounden, from the noun (see above).

Verb

hound (third-person singular simple present hounds, present participle hounding, simple past and past participle hounded)

1. (transitive) To persistently harass.
2. (transitive) To urge on against; to set (dogs) upon in hunting.
   • 1897, Andrew Lang, The Book of Dreams and Ghosts (page 162)

     We both thought we saw what had the appearance to be a fox, and hounded the dogs at it, but they would not pursue it.

Translations

Etymology 3

From Middle English hownde, hount, houn, probably from Old Norse húnn, from Proto-Germanic *h?naz.

Noun

hound (plural hounds)

1. (nautical, in the plural) Projections at the masthead, serving as a support for the trestletrees and top to rest on.
2. A side bar used to strengthen portions of the running gear of a vehicle.

Anagrams

• Duhon, Hudon, hundo, no duh

Middle English

Alternative forms

• honde, hounde, hund, hunde, hond, hownd, hownde, hwond

Etymology

From Old English hund

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /hu?nd/, /hund/

Noun

hound (plural houndes or hounden)

1. dog, hound (The canid Canis lupus familiaris)
   1. A pet dog; a dog kept for companionship.
   2. A hunting or sporting dog; a hound.
   3. (specifically) A male or fully-grown dog.
2. A strong term of abuse, especially used against enemies of one's religion
3. (rare) A heraldic portrayal of a dog.
4. (rare) The forces of evil; the infernal army.
5. (rare) Sirius (star)

Usage notes

The general word for "dog" is hound; dogge is vaguely derogatory and has a sense of "mongrel" or "cur".

Derived terms

• hound fysch
• hounden
• houndesberye
• houndestonge

Descendants

• English: hound
  • Northumbrian: hoond, hund
• Scots: hoond, hund

References

• “h?und, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-06-11.