loco
loco Lexical Profile
loco Game Scores & Validity
• adjective
North American Crazy, insane, or out of one's mind (used informally).
"The crowd went completely loco when the home team scored the winning goal in the final seconds."
• noun
British A railway locomotive engine (used informally).
"The heritage railway volunteers spent months restoring the vintage steam loco to working order."
North American Any of various leguminous plants of the genera Astragalus and Oxytropis native to western North America that cause neurological poisoning in grazing livestock; locoweed.
"Ranchers carefully inspected the dry pasture to make sure their horses were not grazing on loco."
North American A chronic neurological disease in horses, cattle, and sheep caused by the ingestion of toxic locoweed plants.
"The veterinarian recognized the erratic gait and weight loss in the herd as classic signs of loco."
• verb
North American To poison with locoweed or drive crazy (especially of livestock).
"Several cattle were locoed after wandering into a patch of toxic milkvetch during the drought."
• Rhymes for loco
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
In the sense of 'crazy,' borrowed in the 19th century from Spanish loco ('mad, insane'), originally linked to cattle poisoned by eating locoweed in the American Southwest. The railway noun sense is an independent 19th-century clipping of 'locomotive.'