wooer

woo +‎ -er; from Middle English wowere, from Old English wōgere, from wōgian (“to woo”).

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈwu.ɚ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈwuː.ə/
• Rhymes: -uːə(ɹ)

wooer (plural wooers)

1. Someone who woos or courts.
   • 1595, Edmund Spenser, Amoretti in Amoretti and Epithalamion, London: William Ponsonby, Sonnet 23,

     Penelope for her Vlisses sake,

     Deuiz’d a Web her wooers to deceaue:

     in which the worke that she all day did make

     the same at night she did againe vnreaue,

   • 1596-99?, William Shakespeare,The Merchant of Venice, Act I, scene ii:

     Whiles we shut the gate upon one wooer, another knocks at the door.

   • 1748, Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, London, Volume 4, Letter 23, p. 120,

     She wrote such a widow-like refusal when she went from me, as might not exclude hope in any other wooer; whatever it may do in Mr. Tony Harlowe.

   • 1848, Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, Chapter 8,

     Sally Leadbitter was vulgar-minded to the last degree; never easy unless her talk was of love and lovers; in her eyes it was an honour to have had a long list of wooers.

   • 1928, Dorothy Parker, “For a Favorite Granddaughter” in Sunset Gun, Garden City, NY: Sun Dial, p. 62,

     Never hold your heart in pain

     For an evil-doer;

     Never flip it down the lane

     To a gifted wooer.

   • 1997, Saul Bellow, The Actual, New York: Viking, p. 20,

     She was, I think, the only girl I ever called on. I wasn’t much of a wooer. When I rang at her front door, her mother seemed taken aback. I should have been the dry cleaner’s messenger, picking up the blouses.

• sparker
• suitor

• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967
• Cambridge International Dictionary of English, "Wooer," .