Wiktionary

cooperate

See also: coöperate and co-operate

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Originated 1595–1605 from Late Latin cooperātus, perfect passive participle of cooperor (“to work with”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix) for more. Equivalent to co- +‎ operate. Displaced native Old English efnwyrċan.

Pronunciation

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Verb

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cooperate (third-person singular simple present cooperates, present participle cooperating, simple past and past participle cooperated)

  1. (intransitive) To work or act together, especially for a common purpose or benefit.
    • 2012 November 7, Matt Bai, “Winning a Second Term, Obama Will Confront Familiar Headwinds”, in New York Times‎[1]:
      In polling by the Pew Research Center in November 2008, fully half the respondents thought the two parties would cooperate more in the coming year, versus only 36 percent who thought the climate would grow more adversarial.
  2. (intransitive) To allow for mutual unobstructed action.
  3. (intransitive) To function in harmony, side by side.
  4. (intransitive) To engage in economic cooperation.
  5. (law jargon, transitive) To obtain the cooperation of (a potential witness); to turn (someone) into a cooperating witness.[1]

Usage notes

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  • The usual pronunciation of 'oo' is /uː/ or /ʊ/. The diaeresis in the spelling of coöperate, now obsolete outside the pages of The New Yorker, was intended to emphasize that the second o begins a separate syllable.
  • The solid form is much more common than the hyphenated form in both British and American corpora. The hyphenated form was formerly more common in British usage, but is now rarely seen.[2]

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ Liberman, Mark and various commenters (2024), “‘Cooperate him’”, in Language Log.
  2. ^ cooperate,co-operate at the Google Books Ngram Viewer.

Further reading

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Italian

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Etymology 1

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Verb

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cooperate

  1. inflection of cooperare:
    1. second-person plural present indicative
    2. second-person plural imperative

Etymology 2

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Participle

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cooperate f pl

  1. feminine plural of cooperato

Latin

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Participle

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cooperāte

  1. vocative masculine singular of cooperātus

Spanish

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Verb

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cooperate

  1. second-person singular voseo imperative of cooperar combined with te
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