A ninny; a simpleton.

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1794.  

        But Satan was not such a coot
To sell Judea for a goat.
Gazette of the U.S., Phila., Jan. 17: from the Connecticut Courant.    

2

1824.  

        “Poh, Jo, you coot,” cries Shacklefoot,
  “You’d better come to halting O,
And stop the noise of these rude boys,
  By paying for the malting O.”
Old Colony Memorial (Plymouth), March 6.    

3

1848.  

        Ef I ’d expected sech a trick, I would n’t ha’ cut my foot
By goin’ an’ votin’ fer myself like a consumed coot.
Lowell, ‘Biglow Papers,’ 1st Series, No. 9.    

4

1850.  Little coot! Don’t you know the Bible is the best book in the world.—S. Judd, ‘Margaret,’ p. 134 (Bartlett).

5

1856.  He ’s an amazin’ ignorant old coot, tew—’t is surprisin’ how little he knows!—Whitcher, ‘The Widow Bedott Papers,’ No. 9.

6

1856.  I used to be a verdant coot myself, but Zeph could beat me to death.—Weekly Oregonian, Aug. 2.

7

1857.  It is a poor coot, let me tell you, that will make such excuses.—H. C. Kimball at the Bowery, Salt Lake City, Sept. 20: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ v. 251.

8

1857.  He bestowed upon himself a variety of contemptuous epithets, terminating respectively with the words “coot,” “fool,” and “pewter-head,” and then walked out into the open air in search of a more healthy mental atmosphere.—J. G. Holland, ‘The Bay-State,’ p. 191.

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