loco

1. not comparableentertainmentA direction in written or printed music to be returning to the proper pitch after having played an octave higher or lower.

comparative more loco · superlative most loco

1. colloquialCrazy.

   It's Cottontail Smith, and he's gone plumb loco!

   1943 April 3, Super-Rabbit, spoken by an unnamed rabbit

   4 more examples

   Going loco down in Acapulco / If you stay too long / Yes, you'll be going loco down in Acapulco / The magic down there is so strong

   1988, Phil Collins, “Loco in Acapulco”, in Indestructible, performed by Four Tops

   Who you trying to get crazy with ése? Don't you know I'm loco?

   1993, “Insane in the Brain”, in Black Sunday, performed by Cypress Hill

   Holla in New York, fo'sho they'll tell you I'm loco

   2003, “In da Club”, in Get Rich or Die Tryin', performed by 50 Cent

   You know, I’m a little loco. Kinda crazy, zany guy.

   2003 December 15, The New Yorker, page 56

2. SouthwesternUSIntoxicated by eating locoweed.

   Synonyms: pea struck

plural locos · plural locoes

1. countableuncountableA certain species of Astragalus or Oxytropis, capable of causing locoism.

   Synonyms: locoweed

present singular third person locos · participle present locoing · participle past locoed · past locoed

1. transitiveTo poison with the loco plant; to affect with locoism.
2. broadlycolloquialtransitiveTo render insane.

   They say that he is locoed. The insane asylums of California contain many shepherds.

   1904, Charles Dudley Warner, “The Locoed Novelist”, in The Complete Essays of C. D. Warner

plural locos

1. abbreviationinformalrail transportShort for locomotive.

   Small boys in 1963 could have traction engines with real steam coming out of the funnel, and Old Western locos had flashing lights, hooters and cow-pushers.

   1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 94

   1 more example

   A locomotive is, next to a marine engine, the most sensitive thing man ever made; and No. .007, besides being sensitive, was new. The red paint was hardly dry on his spotless bumper-bar, his headlight shone like a fireman’s helmet, and his cab might have been a hard-wood-finish parlour. They had run him into the round-house after his trial—he had said good-bye to his best friend in the shops, the overhead travelling-crane—the big world was just outside; and the other locos were taking stock of him.

   1898, Rudyard Kipling, chapter .007, in The Day's Work, New York: Doubleday & McClure Co., page 243

2. USabbreviationhistoricalinformalgovernmentShort for locofoco, in its various senses.

   Like his fellow Young American locos, Thomas Dorr was an early and vigorous advocate of global republicanism and William Leggett’s locofocoism, though this point is little-known and less emphasized in histories of the Dorr Rebellion.

   2016 November 29, Anthony Comegna, The Loco-Foco Movement...