Word.ws English Dictionary

bowse

bowse verb: to drink excessively and socially; to carouse.

Verb (1)

bowse (third-person singular simple present bowses, present participle bowsing, simple past and past participle bowsed)

  1. (archaic) To drink excessively and socially; to carouse.
    • O generous food!
      Drest as though bold Robin Hood,
      Would, with his maid Marian,
      Sup and bowse from horn and can.1820, John Keats, “Lines on the Mermaid Tavern”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: […] [Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC, page 131

Noun

bowse (plural bowses)

  1. A carouse; a drinking bout; a booze.

Verb (2)

bowse (third-person singular simple present bowses, present participle bowsing, simple past and past participle bowsed)

  1. To haul or hoist (something) with a tackle.

Forms of bowse

Verb
third-person singular presentbowses
present participlebowsing
past participlebowsed
pastbowsed
alternative formbouse
Noun
pluralbowses

Origin of bowse

From Middle English bousen, from Middle Dutch būsen, buisen, buysen (“to drink heavily”) (Dutch buizen). Related to Middle High German būsen (“to swell, inblow”). More at beer.

Origin unknown.

Words formed from bowse

Questions about bowse

What does bowse mean?
Bowse means to drink excessively and socially; to carouse.
What part of speech is bowse?
Bowse can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of bowse?
The past tense of bowse is bowsed.

Words near bowse in the dictionary

  1. bows in
  2. bows out
  3. bows to
  4. bowsaw
  5. bowsaws
  6. bowse
  7. bowsed
  8. bowser
  9. bowsers
  10. bowses
  11. Bowsher

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bowse (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bowse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bowse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.