pookoo

plural pookoos

1. obsoleteObsolete form of puku (“medium-sized antelope found in Central Africa”).

   The pookoo (Kobus vardoni) of the same country, though now extremely rare, bears the name of another sportsman who also died without putting the world into his debt.

   1894, Robert Brown, “Man and Beast: The Beginning of the End”, in The Story of Africa and Its Explorers, volume 3, London: Cassell & Company, page 210

   2 more examples

   The pookoo (Cobus Vardoni), named after Major Vardon, a mighty hunter of Livingstone's early period, is another rare, water-loving antelope, found by one or two travellers near the Zambesi in the direction of the Chobe Kiver Junction.

   1893, H[enry] Anderson Bryden, Gun and Camera in Southern Africa: A Year of Wanderings in Bechuanaland, the Kalahari Desert, and the Lake River Country, Ngamiland […] , London: Edward Stanford, page 507

   Returning to camp I saw my first pookoo standing out in the middle of the plain. It had seen me, so that I could approach no nearer than three hundred yards. […] The pookoo is a most beautiful little antelope, and carries itself exactly like a waterbuck. The hair is reddish, long and curly, and the hide (as with all the waterbucks) very tough and thick.

   1900, Ewart S. Grogan, Arthur H. Sharp, “Karonga to Kituta across the Tanganyika Plateau”, in From the Cape to Cairo: The First Traverse of Africa from South to North, London: Hurst and Blackett, page 66