zoo

noun

1. (countable)A park where live animals are exhibited.

   “The London Zoo was built in 1828.”

   “The San Juan market is Mexico City's most famous deli of exotic meats, where an adventurous shopper can hunt down hard-to-find critters such as ostrich, wild boar and crocodile. Only the city zoo offers greater species diversity.”

2. (countable, figuratively, informal)Any place that is wild, crowded, or chaotic.

   “The shopping center was a zoo the week before Christmas.”

3. (countable, figuratively, informal)A large and varied collection of something.

   “After his insightful book The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, Spoto published The Dark Side of Genius, a portrayal of the elderly director as a lonely man who was a veritable zoo of desires, suspicions, fears, and addictions (food, drink, romantic infatuation, and filmmaking).”

   “From this point on, an entire zoo of possibilities arose: strange stars, different families of neutron stars, hybrid stars, etc.”

   “But powerful as the quark model and the electroweak theory were in describing the zoo of subatomic particles, this still left a huge gap.”

4. (US, countable, slang)The jungle.

   “I'm not all that unhappy about being out on an actual patrol, but there's a worried feeling wandering around the back of my mind, not exactly fear, more like a sort of lurking anxiety at being out in the dreaded jungle, the zoo, where the enemy hides.”

5. (abbreviation, alt-of, clipping, countable, informal)Clipping of zoophile.

   “Zoophiles, or 'zoos,' are sexually and emotionally attracted to animals, as in a sexual orientation.”

   “Bestiality or zoophilia—whatever we decide to call it—is one of the most pressing issues for all domesticated animals, […] From the scanty research available, the following picture emerges: the majority of zoos are male, though certainly not all; […]”

6. (broadly, informal, uncountable)Clipping of zoophile.