cote

cote — noun

1. a small wooden hut or coop on a farm, used to keep pigeons, doves, sheep, or oth

1.nounC2
Definition

a small wooden hut or coop on a farm, used to keep pigeons, doves, sheep, or other tame animals safe overnight.

Example

Felipe whitewashed the old pigeon cote behind the barn before spring arrived.

compound: pigeon cote

Every evening, Meera shooed the doves back into the wooden cote near the orchard.

into the cote (returning home)

Common collocations
  • pigeon cote
  • dovecote
  • sheep cote
  • in the cote
Synonyms
  • coop

    everyday word, especially for chickens; less literary

  • shed

    more general; covers many kinds of small farm buildings

  • pen

    an enclosed area for animals, often without a roof

Grammar Patterns

a [animal] cote

in / inside the cote

Usage Note

Today the bare word 'cote' is rare on its own; you mostly meet it as part of compounds like 'dovecote', 'pigeon cote', or 'sheep cote'. Mostly found in rural, historical, or literary writing rather than in everyday conversation.

Common Mistakes

The chickens slept in their cote.
The chickens slept in their coop.
modern farming usually says 'coop' for chickens; 'cote' is reserved for doves, pigeons, and sometimes sheep.

cote — verb

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

All five words name a built shelter for animals, but each fits a different animal and tone. 'Cote' is the oldest and now the most literary; you mostly meet it in compounds like 'dovecote' or 'sheep cote' and in writing about old country estates. 'Coop' is the everyday word, especially for chickens — small, simple, often wire-fronted, and never literary. 'Pen' is broader and usually open to the sky: a sheep pen or a pig pen is an enclosure rather than a hut. 'Shed' is more general still and not animal-specific — a shed can store tools as easily as house goats. 'Stable' is reserved for horses and is normally a solid, walled building. So a Victorian estate might list a dovecote near the orchard, a sheep cote up the hill, a pig pen by the kitchen garden, a coop full of hens by the back door, and a stable for the carriage horses near the front gates.

cote ↗coop ↗pen ↗shed ↗stable ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

  • pigeon cote
  • dovecote
  • sheep cote

Phrases

  • return to the cote
  • build a cote

Prepositions

  • in (the cote)
  • into (the cote)
  • out of (the cote)

Etymology

Old English (cot)Middle English (cote)Modern English

'Cote' comes straight from Old English 'cot' or 'cote', meaning a small shed, hut, or shelter — the same root that lies behind the modern word 'cottage'. It is closely related to similar Germanic words for small dwellings. The hunting verb 'cote' (sense 2) has a quite separate history: it is borrowed from Old French 'coter', meaning 'to mark' or 'to come up alongside', and made its way into English hunting manuals in the 1500s. The two senses became spelled the same by accident rather than by shared meaning.