ouse
/uːz/
ouse is the obsolete spelling of ooze.
Meaning of ooze
Noun (1)
ooze (countable and uncountable, plural oozes)
Noun (2)
ooze (countable and uncountable, plural oozes)
- Soft mud, slime, or shells especially in the bed of a river or estuary.
- my son i' th' ooze is bedded.1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
- A pelagic marine sediment containing a significant amount of the microscopic remains of either calcareous or siliceous planktonic debris organisms.
- Seaweed were left on the blackened marble, while the salt ooze defaced the matchless works of art.1826, [Mary Shelley], The Last Man. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC
- Synonyms:
- pteropod ooze
Proper noun capitalized: Ouse
Ouse
- Various rivers in England.
- Here Ouse, slow-winding through a level plain
Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o’er,
Conducts the eye along his sinuous course
Delighted.1786 [1834], William Cowper, The Task Book 1 in Poems, 254
- River Ouse, Yorkshire: A river in North Yorkshire and East Riding of Yorkshire.
- River Ouse, Sussex: A river in both West Sussex and East Sussex.
- River Great Ouse, Northamptonshire and East Anglia.
- River Little Ouse, a tributary of the River Great Ouse.
- Here Ouse, slow-winding through a level plain
- A locality in Central Highlands Council, central Tasmania, Australia.
Forms of ouse
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | ouses |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | ouses |
| present participle | ousing |
| past participle | oused |
| past | oused |
Origin of ouse
From Old English Usa, probably of Romano-British Celtic origin, from Proto-Celtic *udso-, from Proto-Indo-European *wed- (“water”).
Words formed from ouse
Questions about ouse
- What does ouse mean?
- Ouse means various rivers in England.
- What is ouse the obsolete spelling of?
- Ouse is the obsolete spelling of ooze.
- What part of speech is ouse?
- Ouse is a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce ouse?
- Ouse is pronounced /uːz/.
Words near ouse in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ouse (page history and authors); Ouse (page history and authors); ooze (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Tesco250-Ouse.wav.
Cite this entry: “ouse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ouse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
