doze

/doʊz/

doze verb: to sleep lightly or briefly; to nap, snooze. Also the pronunciation spelling of those.

Verb (1)

doze (third-person singular simple present dozes, present participle dozing, simple past and past participle dozed)

(intransitive) To sleep lightly or briefly; to nap, snooze.
- I didn’t sleep very well, but I think I may have dozed a bit.
- If he Happen'd to Doze a little no and then in a Morning, the Jolly Cobbler Wak'd him.1692, Roger L’Estrange, “ (please specify the fable number.) (please specify the name of the fable.)”, in Fables, of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists: […], London: […] R[ichard] Sare, […], →OCLC
Synonyms:

nod
(transitive) To make dull; to stupefy.
- I was an hour […] in casting up about twenty sums, being dozed with much work.1666, Samuel Pepys, diary dated 13 October, 1666
- October 29, 1693, Robert South, a sermon preached at Christ-church in Oxford before the university
  They left for a long time (as it were) dozed and benumbed.

Noun

doze (plural dozes)

A light, short sleep or nap.
- I felt much better after a short doze.
- Others who conscientiously attended the Technical College at night often drooped over their desks in a doze, and one does not wonder at it.1944 September and October, A Former Pupil, “Some Memories of Crewe Works—I”, in Railway Magazine, page 285
Synonyms:

sleep

Verb (2)

doze (third-person singular simple present dozes, present participle dozing, simple past and past participle dozed)

(intransitive, slang) To bulldoze.

Also used as

doze is also the pronunciation spelling of those.

doze meaning in Vietnamese

doze in Vietnamese

to sleep lightly or briefly: ngủ gật

Examples of doze in a sentence

He was afraid he would doze off on the long drive home.
He made a halfhearted attempt to read the chapter before giving up and dozing off.
My nephew is a little scamp who likes to leave lighted firecrackers under the lawnchairs of his dozing elders.

All 20 example sentences with doze

Synonyms of doze

nod
sleep

Forms of doze

Verb
third-person singular present	dozes
present participle	dozing
past participle	dozed
past	dozed
alternative form (archaic)	dose
Noun
plural	dozes

Past tense of doze: dozed

Origin of doze

From Middle English *dosen, from Old Norse dúsa (“to doze, rest, remain quiet”), from Proto-Germanic *dusāną (“to be dizzy”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰews- (“to fly, whirl”), from *dʰew- (“to fly, shake, reek, steam, smolder”). Cognate with Old Frisian dusia (“to be dizzy”), German Low German dösen (“to doze”), German dösen (“to doze”), Danish døse (“to doze”), dialectal Swedish dusa (“to doze, slumber”), Icelandic dúsa (“to doze”), Old English dysiġ (“foolish, stupid”), Scots dosnit (“stunned, stupefied”), Icelandic dúra (“to nap, slumber”), also compare Dutch doezelen (“to doze”). More at dizzy.

Clipping of bulldoze.

Words formed from doze

Phrases with doze

doze offs

Words that rhyme with doze

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about doze

What does doze mean?: Doze means to sleep lightly or briefly; to nap, snooze.
What is doze in Vietnamese?: Doze in Vietnamese is ngủ gật. See Doze meaning in Vietnamese.
What part of speech is doze?: Doze can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce doze?: Doze is pronounced /doʊz/.
What is the past tense of doze?: The past tense of doze is dozed.

Words near doze in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: doze (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-doze.ogg.

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