loco

See also: locò

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈləʊ.kəʊ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊkəʊ

Etymology 1

From Italian.

Adverb

loco (not comparable)

1. (music) A direction in written or printed music to be returning to the proper pitch after having played an octave higher or lower.

Etymology 2

From Spanish loco (“insane, crazy; loose”).

Adjective

loco (comparative more loco, superlative most loco)

1. (colloquial) Crazy.
   • 1943 April 3, Super-Rabbit, spoken by an unnamed rabbit:

     It's Cottontail Smith, and he's gone plumb loco!

   • 1988, Phil Collins, “Loco in Acapulco”, in Indestructible, performed by Four Tops:

     Going loco down in Acapulco / If you stay too long / Yes, you'll be going loco down in Acapulco / The magic down there is so strong

   • 1993, “Insane in the Brain”, in Black Sunday, performed by Cypress Hill:

     Who you trying to get crazy with ése? Don't you know I'm loco?

   • 2003, “In da Club”, in Get Rich or Die Tryin', performed by 50 Cent:

     Holla in New York, fo'sho they'll tell you I'm loco

   • 2003 December 15, The New Yorker, page 56:

     You know, I’m a little loco. Kinda crazy, zany guy.

2. (Southwestern US) Intoxicated by eating locoweed.

   Synonym: pea struck

Derived terms

• loc
• loco moco
• locoweed

Translations

crazy

Bulgarian: луд (bg) (lud), куку m (kuku) (noun), въртоглав (bg) (vǎrtoglav) Chinese: Mandarin: 瘋 / 疯 (zh) (fēng) Finnish: hullu (fi) Russian: чо́кнутый (ru) (čóknutyj)

Noun

loco (plural locos or locoes)

1. A certain species of Astragalus or Oxytropis, capable of causing locoism.

   Synonym: locoweed

Verb

loco (third-person singular simple present locos, present participle locoing, simple past and past participle locoed)

1. (transitive) To poison with the loco plant; to affect with locoism.
2. (transitive, colloquial, by extension) To render insane.
   • 1904, Charles Dudley Warner, “The Locoed Novelist”, in The Complete Essays of C. D. Warner‎:

     They say that he is locoed. The insane asylums of California contain many shepherds.

Related terms

• locoism

Etymology 3

Clipping of locomotive.

Noun

loco (plural locos)

2. (rail transport, informal) A locomotive.
   • 1898, Rudyard Kipling, “.007”, in The Day's Work‎, New York: Doubleday & McClure Co., page 243:

     A locomotive is, next to a marine engine, the most sensitive thing man ever made; and No. .007, besides being sensitive, was new. The red paint was hardly dry on his spotless bumper-bar, his headlight shone like a fireman’s helmet, and his cab might have been a hard-wood-finish parlour. They had run him into the round-house after his trial—he had said good-bye to his best friend in the shops, the overhead travelling-crane—the big world was just outside; and the other locos were taking stock of him.

   • 1971, Gwen White, Antique Toys And Their Background, page 94:

     Small boys in 1963 could have traction engines with real steam coming out of the funnel, and Old Western locos had flashing lights, hooters and cow-pushers.

Derived terms

• diesel loco
• locoman
• locoshed
• locospotter
• steam loco

Translations

locomotive (short form)

German: Lok (de) f Norwegian: Bokmål: lok (no) n Nynorsk: lok n Russian: лок (ru) m (lok) Swedish: lok (sv) n

See also

• in loco
• in loco parentis
• in loco parentum

Anagrams

• COOL, Colo, Colo., Cool, colo, colo-, cool

French

Etymology

Clipping of locomotive

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /lɔ.ko/

Noun

loco f (plural locos)

1. (informal) locomotive

Further reading

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

Interlingua

Noun

loco (plural locos)

1. place, location

Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈlɔ.ko/
• Rhymes: -ɔko
• Hyphenation: lò‧co

Etymology 1

From Latin locus, from Old Latin stlocus, from Proto-Indo-European *stel- (“to put, place, locate”).

Noun

loco m (plural lochi or (obsolete, regional) locora f)

1. (archaic, now poetic) alternative form of luogo (“place, location”)
   • 1300s–1310s, Dante Alighieri, “Canto III”, in Inferno [Hell], lines 16–18; republished as Giorgio Petrocchi, editor, La Commedia secondo l'antica vulgata [The Commedia according to the ancient vulgate], 2^nd revised edition, Florence: publ. Le Lettere, 1994:

     ["]Noi siam venuti al loco ov’i’ t’ ho detto / che tu vedrai le genti dolorose / c’ hanno perduto il ben de l’intelletto".

     "We have come to the place wherein I told you that you will see the tormented people who have lost the good of intellect."

   • 1350s, anonymous author, “Prologo e primo capitolo [Preface and first chapter]”, in Cronica [Chronicle]‎ (overall work in Old Italian); republished as Giuseppe Porta, editor, Anonimo romano - Cronica, Adelphi, 1979, →ISBN:

     le memorie se facevano con scoiture in sassi e pataffii, li quali se ponevano nelle locora famose dove demoravano moititudine de iente (Romanesco)

     accounts were made through incisions on rocks and gravestones, which were placed in famed places, where moltitudes of people lived

Etymology 2

Inherited from Latin illōc but influenced in its form by Etymology 1.

Adverb

loco

1. (Old Italian, now only dialectal) there, in that place

   Synonyms: (uncommon) colà, (literary) ivi, là, lì

   • c. 1260s, Brunetto Latini, chapter VII, in Il tesoretto [The small treasure]‎, lines 769–774; collected in Luigi Di Benedetto, editor, Poemetti allegorico-didattici del secolo XIII [Allegorical-didactical poems from the 13^th century]‎, Bari: Laterza, 1941, page 25:

     Questi hanno per ofizio
     che lo bene, e lo vizio,
     li fatti, e le favelle
     ritornano ale celle
     ch’i’ v’agio nominate,
     e loco son pensate.

     Their [the senses'] task is [to see to it] that the good, and the vices, the facts, and the words return to the spaces I have mentioned, and there they're thought.

Etymology 3

Verb

loco

1. first-person singular present indicative of locare

Further reading

• loco¹ in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Anagrams

• -colo, colo, colò, oclo-