swoose
swoose noun: an animal cross between a swan and a goose, especially one produced from a male swan and a female goose.
Noun
swoose (plural swooses or sweese)
- An animal cross between a swan and a goose, especially one produced from a male swan and a female goose.
- A bird prodigy of evil and hybrid character is the despair of a Norfolk farmer. It rejoices in the name of the “swoose”, a portmanteau word indicating its origin, for its father was a swan and its mother a goose. This ill-assorted pair had three children — three “sweese”.1920 July 13, Daily Mail
- Mr. Peirce had already promised the bird to me, and so, during the summer, hearing that a more or less fabulous fowl had arrived from nowhere in particular, I visited the Park and Mr. Peirce’s long lost “Swoose.”1928 John C. Phillips, "Another "Swoose" or Swan × Goose Hybrid," The Auk, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan., 1928), pp. 39-40
- Synonyms:
- gwan
- A person or thing sharing the characteristics of two otherwise separate groups; a hybrid (also see Swoose)
- The associate in arts or A.A. degree, another "swoose," has quickly established itself as the community college degree in a degree-obsessed nation.1970 Dec, James J. Zigerell, “The Community College in Search of an Identity”, in The Journal of Higher Education, volume 41, number 9, pages 701–712
- Well by the time all the cooks in that broth got through with it, by the time it emerged from the Congress, it was a "swoose." It was not swan and it was not goose, it was a "swoose." It was a "swoose" to its dying day, which hasn't quite arrived yet, but its [sic] imminent.1979 "A History of Cancer Control in the United States, 1946-1971: Appendixes," U.S. National Cancer Institute, Division of Cancer Control and Rehabilitation, p98
- A stupid person.
- Much public interest is evinced in these queer birds and nowadays when an ill-tempered husband rouses his wife to the point of retaliation, she gives vent to her feelings in the culminating insult: “You swoose!”1920 September 5, Wisconsin State Journal
- There would be but one result and that is the passers-by would regard him as just another one of those “swooses” standing on a box making nothingness noises they had been so accustomed to seeing and hearing.1948 March 27, Sid Sidenberg, “A Pitchman's Individualism Works Against Organization”, in The Billboard, page 144
- Synonyms:
- goose
Proper noun capitalized: Swoose
the Swoose
- A specific B-17 bomber plane used extensively in World War Two.
- The Swoose was so named because it contained so many scavenged parts that it was half swan and half goose or a “Swoose”.2005, Robert R. Burch, World War II: A Pilot's Experience, Trafford Publishing, page 69
Examples of swoose in a sentence
- And this one's a cross between a swan and a goose, and we call him a swoose.1968 Jan, Samuel J. Sackett, “Another Cross-Fertilization Joke”, in Western Folklore, volume 27, number 1, pages 50–51:
- I had been the mistress of fourteen turtles over a number of years, and I could boast having been bitten by, along with the standard animals, a horse, a swoose, and a camel.2000, Grace Marmor Spruch, Squirrels at My Window: Life With a Remarkable Gang of Urban Squirrels, Big Earth Publishing, page 22:
- But Mom describes my life that year pretty accurately when she says that I had become a “swoose”- that is to say, not a swan and not a goose.2000, Claire Cloninger, Karla Worley, When the Glass Slipper Doesn't Fit, New Hope Publishers:
Synonyms of swoose
Forms of swoose
| plural | swooses |
|---|---|
| plural | sweese |
Origin of swoose
Blend of swan + goose.
Blend of swan + goose (from a song about a bird that was half swan, half goose) because it had another aircraft's tail grafted onto it.
Questions about swoose
- What does swoose mean?
- Swoose means an animal cross between a swan and a goose, especially one produced from a male swan and a female goose.
- How do you use swoose in a sentence?
- And this one's a cross between a swan and a goose, and we call him a swoose.
- What part of speech is swoose?
- Swoose can be a noun or a proper noun.
- What is the plural of swoose?
- The plural of swoose is swooses.
Words near swoose in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: swoose (page history and authors); Swoose (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: “swoose.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/swoose. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.