Noun

(head)

Racoon hunting.

* 1876 , John Burroughs, Winter Sunshine , part 1, Hurd and Houghton, page 76

At this time, cooning in the remote interior is a famous pastime. As this animal is entirely nocturnal in its habits it is hunted only at night.

* 1875 , John Burroughs, Winter Sunshine , part 2, Kessinger Publishing (2004), pages 72–73

But if he [the dog''] strikes a trail, you presently hear''... loud and repeated barking as he reaches the foot of the tree in which the coon has taken refuge. Then follows a pellmell rush of the cooning party up the hill, into the woods, through the brush and the darkness

* 1932 , The Atlantic Monthly , volume information kept strictly confidential by Google Books, page 635

These are the kind of men who have served their time and taken all the six degrees necessary to a scout's full education, “foxing, snaking, moling, cooning , possuming, and, if need be, wolfing ;” who riding at a canter through the woods, will stop their horse...

* 1950 , William A. Owens (compiler), Texas Folk Songs , page 245

I met Colonel Davy a-going out a-cooning ,

Says I, “Davy Crockett, how do you hunt without a gun?”

“Oh,” says he, “Pompey Smash, if you’ll follow along with Davy,

I’ll soon show you how for to grin a coon crazy.”

* 1962 , Ernest Thompson Seton, Two Little Savages , Courier Dover Publications, ISBN 0486209857, page 276

“Aren’t there any Coons ’round here, Mr. Clark?”

“Oh, I reckon so. Y-e-s! Down a piece in the hardwood bush near Widdy Biddy Baggs’s place there’s lots o’ likely Cooning ground.”

Noun

(en noun)

(archaic, dialectal) A nap or rest in the middle of the day.

*{{quote-book, year=1896, author=Various, title=McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=When the girls went in to dinner the men had finished theirs, and were lounging in the shady yard enjoying their nooning . }}

*{{quote-book, year=1899, author=George Edward Woodberry, title=Heart of Man, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=An hour or two passed, and we saw a house in the distance to which we drove,--a humble house, sod-built, like that we had made our nooning in. }}

*{{quote-book, year=1912, author=Charles Egbert Craddock, title=The Ordeal, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=It was the nooning hour, and the men at their limited leisure lay in the sun on the piles of lumber, like lizards. }}

(archaic, dialectal) lunch; a meal in the middle of the day

*{{quote-book, year=1875, author=Various, title=Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15,, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=Then on to Big Bitter Cottonwood, where we had our nooning among the trees on the wide sandy bed of the stream, which had sunk under ground for many miles, as is the custom of rivers here. }}

*{{quote-book, year=1878, author=Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), title=A Tramp Abroad, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=A German gentleman and his two young-lady daughters had been taking their nooning at the inn, and when they left, just ahead of us, it was plain that their driver was as drunk as ours, and as happy and good-natured, too, which was saying a good deal. }}

*{{quote-book, year=1909, author=Various, title=The California Birthday Book, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=In proper California fashion we made our nooning by the roadside, pulling up under the shade of a hospitable sycamore and turning Sorreltop out to graze. }}