Other forms: hoots, hooting, hooted
To hoot is to make the low call of an owl. An owl hooted, hooting in the wood, the hoot of an owl.
Tawny owls hoot; barn owls screech, which is why the classic owl sound in films is usually the wrong bird. A car horn hoots in British English, and to hoot with laughter is to laugh loudly. As a noun, a hoot is also something very funny: it was a hoot. Note not give a hoot, meaning not to care at all; and hooter, which is British slang for a nose.
1verbhootTo make the low call of an owl.
“An owl hooted somewhere in the dark woods behind the house.”
2nounfunnySomething very funny.
“You should meet my aunt; she's an absolute hoot.”
hoot is a low call.
Middle English houten is imitative and probably reinforced by a Scandinavian word for a shout of contempt. The owl is named from the sound, and the horn from the owl.
gmq-osw
huta — to cast out in contempt
Middle English
houten
English, today
hoot
Built from
From Middle English houten, huten, hoten, assumed to be of gmq - origin: Swedish hut (“begone!”) (also dialectal Norwegian hut, Bornholm Danish hut, hot), Swedish huta (“to drive someone away (with calls)”), gmq-osw huta (“to cast out in contempt”), related to Swedish hojta (“to holler”), hojt (“a holler”), further related to Middle High German hiuzen, hūzen (“to call to pursuit”). Swedish hut is the common command to call off and silence barking (hunting) dogs on the pursuit. Compare Swedish veta hut (“know one's place, like a dog”) literally “to know 'hoot' (the command)”. The Middle High German terms could suggest an earlier Proto-Germanic (“to command barking en pursuit?”). Maybe cognate to shout? Ultimately imitative of the sound. Compare Old Norse hutututu (“brr”), Norwegian hutra, Swedish huttra, huttla, Danish hudre, Low German hudern, German huttern (“to shiver”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Birds