shoo

present singular third person shoos · participle present shooing · participle past shooed · past shooed

1. informaltransitiveTo induce someone or something to leave.

   Don't just shoo away mosquitoes, kill them!

   3 more examples

   See if you can shoo off the insurance salesmen.

   It was those damned bandages over my eyes, the medley of voices that had shouted back at me down the corridor. But I certainly was getting the willies - and once you get 'em, they grow. Already they were past the stage where you can shoo them off by whistling or singing at yourself.

   1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 15

   In the early 1980s, the Lower East Side with its modest tenement and railroad apartments was still a small village. No one really cared that the hookers were there; they were part of the landscape. That is, until the new mayor decided to clean up his city and shoo them along.

   2015, Kim Gordon, chapter 22, in Carrie Thornton, editor, Girl in a Band, New York: Dey st., →ISBN, page 134

2. informalintransitiveTo leave under inducement.

   You kids had better shoo before your parents get a call.

3. informalrareTo usher someone.

   Shoo the visitor in.

1. informalGo away! Clear off!

   Shoo, fly, don't bother me!

   Synonyms: amscray, away with you, be off with you, beat it, begone, bite me, bog off, bug off

1. YorkshirealternativeAlternative form of she.

   Hearken, hearken, shoo’s cursing on em!” muttered Joseph, towards whom I had been steering.

   1847, Emily Brontë, chapter II, in Wuthering Heights, New York: Harper Brothers, published 1855, →OCLC, page 15