hoarse
UK/hɔːs/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Australia/hoːs/
hoarse adjective: having a dry, harsh tone to the voice, as a result of a sore throat, age, emotion, etc. Also the obsolete spelling of horse.
Adjective
hoarse (comparative hoarser, superlative hoarsest)
- Having a dry, harsh tone to the voice, as a result of a sore throat, age, emotion, etc.
- I am old and my voice is hoarse […]1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC
Verb
hoarse (third-person singular simple present hoarses, present participle hoarsing, simple past and past participle hoarsed)
- To utter hoarsely; to croak.
- "[...] Madame! Is—that—your—horse?!"
"Ain't no horse!" she hoarses. "Thassa thuruly bred Great Dane!" The thuruly bred Great Dane's balls shine like big , bald onions as he squeezes to deposit 4 1⁄2 pounds of vitamin - enriched apcray near the lamp-post.1980, Leo Rosten, King Silky!, HarperCollins Children's Books - "See anything, mum?" she hoarsed. “No—I think it's lower down. Go back to bed, Jane. I'm sure there's nothing to worry about. Someone's forgotten something, that's all.” She wanted to get rid of Jane without knowing exactly.2022 August 1, J. Jefferson Farjeon, Back to Victoria, DigiCat
- "[...] Madame! Is—that—your—horse?!"
Also used as
hoarse is also the obsolete spelling of horse.
hoarse meaning in Arabic, Malay, Indonesian and Vietnamese
hoarse in Arabic
- afflicted by a dry, quite harsh voice
- مَبْحُوح mabḥūḥ
hoarse in Malay
- afflicted by a dry, quite harsh voice
- garau, parau
hoarse in Indonesian
- afflicted by a dry, quite harsh voice
- parau
hoarse in Vietnamese
- afflicted by a dry, quite harsh voice
- khàn
Examples of hoarse in a sentence
- I attempted to sing, but my throat was too hoarse.
- I'm hoarse at the moment and have had to stop writing.
- From the Malay wayang came ‘Rukun Islam’, sung chirpily by a hoarse female voice.
Forms of hoarse
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | hoarser |
| superlative | hoarsest |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | hoarses |
| present participle | hoarsing |
| past participle | hoarsed |
| past | hoarsed |
| Noun | |
| plural | hoarses |
Origin of hoarse
From Middle English hors, hos, from Old English hās, *hārs, from Proto-Germanic *haisaz, *haisraz, akin to Old Norse háss (West Norse) and heiss (East Norse) (whence Icelandic hás, Norwegian Nynorsk hås, Norwegian Bokmål hes and Swedish hes).
Words formed from hoarse
Words that rhyme with hoarse
Questions about hoarse
- What does hoarse mean?
- Hoarse means having a dry, harsh tone to the voice, as a result of a sore throat, age, emotion, etc.
- What is hoarse in Arabic?
- Hoarse in Arabic is مَبْحُوح (mabḥūḥ). See Hoarse meaning in Arabic.
- What part of speech is hoarse?
- Hoarse can be an adjective or a verb.
- How do you pronounce hoarse?
- Hoarse is pronounced /hɔːs/ (UK).
Words near hoarse in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: hoarse (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-hoarse.ogg.
Cite this entry: “hoarse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hoarse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.