cooper

• IPA^(key): /ˈkuːpə(ɹ)/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːpə(ɹ)

From coop +‎ -er.

cooper (countable and uncountable, plural coopers)

1. A craftsman who makes and repairs barrels and similar wooden vessels such as casks, buckets and tubs.

   Hypernym: barrelmaker

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 5, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     They were nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and harpooneers, and ship keepers; a brown and brawny company, with bosky beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns.

2. (obsolete) A drink of half stout and half porter.

cooper (third-person singular simple present coopers, present participle coopering, simple past and past participle coopered)

1. (now rare) To make and repair barrels etc.
2. (transitive, slang, obsolete) To forge or imitate (writing).
   • 1872, Augustus Mayhew, Paved with Gold, page 269:

     […] though, owing to his forged signatures having been too often detected, he was declared to be "a duffer at coopering a monekur."

3. (transitive, slang, obsolete) To intentionally injure (a racehorse) to spoil its chances of winning.
   • 1864, Baily's Magazine of Sports & Pastimes, volume 8, page 110:

     Every design that villainy could suggest was had recourse to in the hopes of nobbling Wild Dayrell; but never being left for an hour by either his trainer or jockey, he escaped the intended 'coopering', even when the lynchpins of the wheels of his van had been tampered with.

• broad cooper
• cooperage
• wine cooper

cooper (plural coopers)

1. Alternative form of coper (“floating grog shop”)

cooper (third-person singular simple present coopers, present participle coopering, simple past and past participle coopered)

1. Alternative form of coper (“operate as floating grog shop”)