Word.ws English Dictionary

doused

doused is the simple past and past participle of douse.

Meaning of douse

Verb (1)

douse (third-person singular simple present douses, present participle dousing, simple past and past participle doused)

  1. (ambitransitive) To plunge suddenly into water; to duck; to immerse.
    • Set fire to your matches! / Douse them in gasoline!2018, Jhariah Clare, “City of Ashes”, in The Great Tale of How I Ruined it All
  2. (intransitive) To fall suddenly into water.
    • swing i' th'air, or douse in water1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678; republished...
  3. (transitive) To put out; to extinguish.
    • The man who doused the fire was told to put the remainder of the coal into the bucket and then give the bucket to the soldier.1999, Arthur D. Jacobs, The Prison Called Hohenasperg

Verb (2)

douse (third-person singular simple present douses, present participle dousing, simple past and past participle doused)

  1. (transitive) To strike, beat, or thrash.
  2. (transitive) To strike or lower in haste; to slacken suddenly
    • Douse the topsail!

See all 8 meanings of douse

Words that rhyme with doused

Questions about doused

What is doused the simple past and past participle of?
Doused is the simple past and past participle of douse.

Words near doused in the dictionary

  1. douroucouli
  2. douroucoulis
  3. dourra
  4. dours
  5. douse
  6. doused
  7. douser
  8. dousers
  9. douses
  10. dousing
  11. dousing-chock

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: doused (page history and authors); douse (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: “doused.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/doused. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.