Word.ws English Dictionary

frowse

frowse verb: to cause to be scruffy or untidy; to rumple or tangle.

Verb

frowse (third-person singular simple present frowses, present participle frowsing, simple past and past participle frowsed)

  1. (transitive) To cause to be scruffy or untidy; to rumple or tangle.
  2. (intransitive) To move or be in a scruffy state or manner.
    • Podson, yawning and frowsing out of his blanket, gaped at this ultimatum in the dawn.1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 88

Forms of frowse

third-person singular presentfrowses
present participlefrowsing
past participlefrowsed
pastfrowsed

Origin of frowse

Back-formation from frowsy.

Questions about frowse

What does frowse mean?
Frowse means to cause to be scruffy or untidy; to rumple or tangle.
What part of speech is frowse?
Frowse is a verb.
What is the past tense of frowse?
The past tense of frowse is frowsed.

Words near frowse in the dictionary

  1. frownsome
  2. frowny
  3. frowny face
  4. frowny faces
  5. frows
  6. frowse
  7. frowsed
  8. frowses
  9. frowsier
  10. frowsiest
  11. frowsily

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: frowse (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: “frowse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/frowse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.