int. Also woah. [Variant of WHOA.] = WO int. 2. Hence Woa v., to stop (trans. and intr.) with the call of ‘woa.’
1840. Dickens, Old C. Shop, xxxviii. Woa-a-a then, will you?
1856. Putnam’s Monthly Mag., Nov., 530/1. With a loud ‘woah!’ the man stopped the beast [sc. ass].
1870. S. Lanier, Nine from Eight, 31. I woa’d my mules mighty easy.
1871. ‘M. Legrand,’ Cambr. Freshm., 251–2. ‘Woa, Princey—woa, my b-boy.’… But Prince wouldn’t ‘woa.’
1892. Chevalier, Wot Cher! iv., in Farmer, Musa Pedestris (1896), 191. ‘Woa! steady! Neddy Woa!’
