Meaning of woo in English

woo

verb [ T ]

/wuː/ us

/wuː/

present participle wooing | past tense and past participle wooed

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to try to persuade someone to support you or to use your business:

The party has been trying to woo the voters with promises of electoral reform.

The airline has been offering discounted tickets to woo passengers away from their competitors.

old-fashioned

If a man woos a woman, he gives her a lot of attention in an attempt to persuade her to marry him:

He wooed her for months with flowers and expensive presents.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Urging & persuading

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Relationships: finding a partner

(Definition of woo from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

woo | American Dictionary

woo

verb [ T ]

/wu/

present tense woos | present participle wooing | past tense and past participle wooed

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to try to persuade someone to support you:

A candidate must woo voters by making them feel important.

dated To woo someone is to try to persuade that person that you are a good person to marry.

(Definition of woo from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

woo | Business English

woo

verb [ T ]

/wuː/ us

wooing | wooed | wooed

Add to word list Add to word list

to try to persuade a particular group of people to support you or use your business:

woo sb away from sth The airline was heavily discounting fares to woo passengers away from their competitors.

woo sb with sth The team's new owners hope to woo disappointed fans with several high-profile players.

Lin is trying to clear her company's legal status as she woos investors.

if one company woos another, the main shareholders in the first company talk to those in the second about the possibility of a merger or friendly takeover:

Cadbury wooed the American firm for a decade until it agreed to be bought.

(Definition of woo from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of woo

woo

In attempts to woo back the audiences the theatre has a new prize-draw campaign: you can win a car by purchasing theatre tickets!

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Private hospitals, in turn, woo powerful politicians and bureaucrats by treating them as very important patients, often free of cost.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

What is to surround the finished human being as an object, has to be acquired and wooed strenuously by him while he is still developing.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

By adamandy refusing their lovers' wooing they make desire an end in and of itself.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

And populist rhetoric was borne in an endeavour to woo the people.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The great museums turned their backs on the citizens and wooed the tourists instead.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

But she insists that he will regret it if he woos her.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Factional bosses have no less desire for the top prizes, but the new rules should give them fewer resources with which to woo followers in pursuit of those prizes.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

It can be summed up by saying that it is a survival package, a series of sops to woo the nationalists.

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