zou

• Audio:

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• Rhymes: -ɑu̯
• IPA^(key): /zɑu̯/

zou

1. singular past indicative of zullen

Borrowed from Occitan zo, onomatopoeic.

• IPA^(key): /zu/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -u

zou

1. (colloquial, chiefly Meridional) shoo, let's go!

   Synonyms: en avant, hop

   • 1869, Alphonse Daudet, “Le poète Mistral”, in Lettres de mon moulin [Letters from My Windmill]‎^[1]:

     La mère va rentrer de la messe; nous déjeunons, et puis, zou! nous allons voir danser les jolies filles…

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• “zou”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

From Middle High German zuo, from Old High German zuo, from Proto-Germanic *tō.

All monosyllabic function words in -éi, -ou (déi, méi, wéi, sou, wou, zwou) have an unstressed pronunciation in [i], [u]. These are normally not reflected in the spelling. The forms zou (adverb) and zu (preposition) are an exception, probably because of the contractions zum, zur, and the corresponding German zu.

• IPA^(key): /tseu̯/, [t͡səʊ̯]

  Rhymes: -əʊ

zou

1. adverbial form of the preposition zu (“in, at”)
2. closed, shut

• zoumaachen
• zouweisen

• ze
• zu

zou

1. nonstandard spelling of zōu
2. nonstandard spelling of zǒu
3. nonstandard spelling of zòu
4. nonstandard spelling of zóu

• Transcriptions of Mandarin into the Latin script often do not distinguish between the critical tonal differences employed in the Mandarin language, using words such as this one without indication of tone.