Word.ws English Dictionary

ouse

/uːz/

ouse is the obsolete spelling of ooze.

Meaning of ooze

Noun (1)

ooze (countable and uncountable, plural oozes)

  1. Tanning liquor, an aqueous extract of vegetable matter (tanbark, sumac, etc.) in a tanning vat used to tan leather.
  2. An oozing, gentle flowing, or seepage, as of water through sand or earth.
  3. (obsolete) Secretion, humour.
  4. (obsolete) Juice, sap.

Noun (2)

ooze (countable and uncountable, plural oozes)

  1. 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...
  2. 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

See all 9 meanings of ooze

Proper noun capitalized: Ouse

Ouse

  1. 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
    1. River Ouse, Yorkshire: A river in North Yorkshire and East Riding of Yorkshire.
    2. River Ouse, Sussex: A river in both West Sussex and East Sussex.
    3. River Great Ouse, Northamptonshire and East Anglia.
    4. River Little Ouse, a tributary of the River Great Ouse.
  2. A locality in Central Highlands Council, central Tasmania, Australia.

Forms of ouse

Noun
pluralouses
Verb
third-person singular presentouses
present participleousing
past participleoused
pastoused

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

  1. Ourthe
  2. ouræus
  3. ous
  4. Ousby
  5. Ousden
  6. ouse
  7. Ouseburn
  8. oused
  9. ousel
  10. Ouseley
  11. Ouseleys

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.