co-co-a

Updated: May 1, 2025

Once more the singing of the birds and the hum of the insect-world fell soothingly upon my ears; and there, as before, sat the pretty doves, still repeating their soft "co-co-a" the endearing expression of their loves. I could have lingered long in the midst of this fair scene long have enjoyed its sylvan beauty; but the intellectual must over yield to the physical.

Mayne Reid - The Quadroon: Adventures in the Far West

But in Johnson's Dictionary the two words are by some accident run together under the heading cocoa, with the disastrous result that modern vulgar usage mixes the two up, spells the coco-nut, 'cocoa-' as if it were co-co-a, and on the other hand pronounces cocoa, the cacao-bean and the beverage, as if it were coco.

James Augustus Henry Murray - The evolution of English lexicography