cootie
/ˈkuːti/ noun
Forms cooties
- noun (dated, British Army military slang or Canada, US, colloquial) A louse (Pediculus humanus).
- noun (Canada, US, Australia, colloquial, childish, usually in the plural) Any germ or contaminant, real or imagined, especially from the opposite gender (for pre-pubescent children). “I’m not drinking from his glass until I wash the cooties off it.”
- noun (rare) A nest-building female American coot (counterpart to cooter).
- noun (rare, slang) A sideswiper, a type of telegraph key.
Synonyms
Etymology
Probably from Malay kutu (“flea, louse”) (and/or Tagalog/Māori). First attested in English in 1917 as British army slang during World War I.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “cootie”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details