tu-whoo, int. (n.)
(tʊˈhwuː)
Also to-who(o, too-hoo.
[Cf. prec.]
Imitation of the call of an owl.
| 1797 Coleridge Christabel i. Concl. 31–2 From cliff and tower, tu—whoo! tu—whoo! Tu—whoo! tu—whoo! from wood and fell! 1853 Hickie tr. Aristoph. (1872) II. 425 The owls, which are constantly crying ‘to-who’. 1862 Borrow Wild Wales liii, The owl..who cried Too-hoo-hoo. 1868 Tennyson Last Tourn. 346 Tuwhoo! do ye see it? do ye see the star? 1899 E. J. Chapman Drama Two Lives, Canadian Summer-night 69 The owl's weird cry..With its long too-hoo! too-hoo! 1906 Essex Rev. XV. 54 The White or Barn owl cries ‘Tu-which’, and the Brown owl ‘Tu-whoo’, or ‘Hoohoo; hoo, hoo, hoo, Hoo-hoo’. |
b. n. The owl's cry.
| 1830 [see prec. b]. 1889 Hilman's Handbk. Chepstow & Wye (ed. 4) App. 125 Unless fair Philomel is silenced by the too-whoo of the prowling owl. |
Hence tu-ˈwhoo v. intr., to utter the cry tu-whoo; to hoot as an owl. Hence tu-ˈwhooing vbl. n. Also tu-whoot v.
| 1843 Thackeray Bluebeard's Ghost Wks. 1908 VI. 363 An owl was too-whooing from the church tower. Ibid., The toowhooing of the owl. 1893 Baring-Gould Cheap Jack Z. xxxvii, A barn-owl..to-whooed in its terror. 1912 Blackw. Mag. Mar. 374/1 An owl tu-whooted to us from the trefoiled arch. |