zoo

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

2. (countable, informal, figuratively) Any place that is wild, crowded, or chaotic.Examples: "The shopping center was a zoo the week before Christmas."countablefigurativelyinformal

3. (countable, informal, figuratively) A large and varied collection of something.Examples: "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."countablefigurativelyinformal

4. (countable, US, military, slang) The jungle.Examples: "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."UScountableslang

5. (countable, informal) Clipping of zoophile.Examples: "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; […]"abbreviationalt-ofclippingcountableinformal

6. (countable, informal) Clipping of zoophile.broadlyinformaluncountable