Word.ws English Dictionary

mosey

/ˈmoʊ.zi/

mosey verb: to set off, get going; to start a journey.

Verb

mosey (third-person singular simple present moseys, present participle moseying, simple past and past participle moseyed)

  1. (US, dialectal, intransitive) To set off, get going; to start a journey.
    • Haven't got time. I must mosey up to the North End to see a man who has got a lovely throat. Nobody can find out what is the matter. He has puzzled all the doctors.1910, Lucy Maud Montgomery, “chapter 1”, in Kilmeny of the Orchard
  2. (US, dialectal, intransitive) To go off quickly: to hurry up.
  3. (US, dialectal, intransitive) To amble; to walk or proceed in a leisurely manner.
    • We'll mosey along toward the river. Kinder take it easy an' drift the herd down slow so as to let the cattle put on flesh.1919, William MacLeod Raine, “chapter 6”, in A Man Four-Square
    • “Was he runnin‘?”
      “No, he’s just moseyin‘ along, so slow you can’t hardly tell it. He’s comin’ this way.”1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC

Adjective

mosey (comparative more mosey, superlative most mosey)

  1. (UK, regional) Hairy, furry.
  2. (Newfoundland) Close, muggy; misty, hazy.

Noun

mosey (plural moseys)

  1. (Ireland) A fool, an idiot.
    • Daedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 1: Telemachus]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part I [Telemachia], page 10

Proper noun capitalized: Mosey

Mosey (plural Moseys)

  1. A surname.

mosey meaning in Urdu

mosey in Urdu

دور جانا, حرکت کرنا, ٹہلنا

Forms of mosey

Verb
third-person singular presentmoseys
present participlemoseying
past participlemoseyed
pastmoseyed
alternative formmosy
alternative formmozey
alternative formmozy
Adjective
comparativemore mosey
superlativemost mosey
alternative formmawsy
alternative formmoosy
alternative formmoozy
Noun
pluralmoseys
Proper noun
pluralMoseys

Origin of mosey

Unknown. Originally attested in Southern US dialects. Suggested origins include: * Spanish vamos (compare vamoose) * British dialectal mosey about (“walk around at leisurely pace”) * an Algonquian term for "walk" (compare Ojibwe bimose (“she or he walks along”)) * proper name Mosey, pet form of Moses, in reference to the biblical Exodus which he led

From moss + -y (apparently reflecting Middle English open vowel lengthening).

From a pet form of the personal name Moses.

Questions about mosey

What does mosey mean?
Mosey means to set off, get going; to start a journey.
What is mosey in Urdu?
Mosey in Urdu is دور جانا, حرکت کرنا, ٹہلنا. See Mosey meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is mosey?
Mosey can be a verb, an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce mosey?
Mosey is pronounced /ˈmoʊ.zi/ (US).
What is the past tense of mosey?
The past tense of mosey is moseyed.

Words near mosey in the dictionary

  1. mosesin
  2. mosesins
  3. mosesite
  4. mosette
  5. mosettes
  6. mosey
  7. moseyed
  8. moseying
  9. moseys
  10. MOSFET
  11. MOSFETs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mosey (page history and authors); Mosey (page history and authors); mosey (Urdu Wiktionary) (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-mosey.ogg.

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