wooze

wooze noun: a liquid formed by leaching bark that is used for soaking hides during the tanning process.

Noun

wooze (countable and uncountable, plural woozes)

A liquid formed by leaching bark that is used for soaking hides during the tanning process.
- No person shall set the fats in tan hills, or other places, where the woozes or leather may take any unkind heats; or shall put any leather into any hot or warm woozes; or shall tan any hide or skin with any hot or warm woozes; [...]1772, Richard Burn, The Justice of the Peace, and Parish Officer, volume III, page 84
- [B]y tanned hides or ſkins, or by tanned pieces of hides or ſkins, are meant only ſuch as are tanned in wooſe made of the bark of trees, or ſumack, or whereof the principal ingredients ſhall be ſuch bark, or ſumack; [...]1779, Gorges Edmond Howard, “Duties”, in An Abstract and Common Place of All the Irish, British, and English Statutes Relative to the Revenue of Ireland, and the Trade Connected therewith. […]...
A state of wooziness.
- "Ah, but you are punishing yourself needlessly, Sonya, I think." Ilya said expansively, leaning a bit closer himself, and seeming to weave in her vision woozily, though whether she was woozing, or he was woozing, or both of them were sharing a friendly little wooze together, it was hard to tell.2013, Norman Spinrad, Russian Spring, →ISBN
- He felt that postbennie wooze.2014, James Ellroy, Perfidia, →ISBN

Verb

wooze (third-person singular simple present woozes, present participle woozing, simple past and past participle woozed)

To soak hides in wooze.
- As to what we called crop leather, when the hides are woozed enough for laying away I have a very strong wooze drawn from them.1856, English Patents of Inventions
To cause to feel woozy.
- Sebastian is too woozed by alcoholism to make any formal contribution to politics, but he makes a special trip to Germany to convince a German friend to abandon Naziism.1982, Evelyn Waugh Newsletter - Volumes 16-24, page 22
- I am woozed out with a sedative, wheeled into the operating room, ...1995, Anne Taylor Fleming, Motherhood Deferred: A Woman's Journey, →ISBN, page 97
To become woozy or sleepy.
- My head was feeling strange, woozing in and woozing out.2006, Janet Taylor Lisle, Black duck, →ISBN, page 191
- As I woozed, he gut-punched me.2010, Richard Marcinko, Designation Gold Rogue Warrior, →ISBN, page 241
To move or function while in a daze.
- Dismissing Zing's desertion, Sheri pitched in so intensively that she barely woozed through the final afternoon, like a setting hen on H-day, feeling life stir in the eggs.1964, P. S. Barrows, More about Scheherazade, page 194
- Stoned, we woozed through monster traffic jams, wisecracking in Vietnamese to the Vietnamese, then stopped at the bars along Tu Do Street, where none of us could afford the drinks and we were cold- shouldered by the bar girls and bawled out.1991, John Balaban, Remembering heaven's face: a moral witness in Vietnam, page 178
To speak while intoxicated; to say in a slurred voice.
- "Click Dark," woozed Amber, "nice to meet ya."1998, John Kane, Best Actress, →ISBN, page 122
- Now — her voice woozed from the speaker—"The little money I accumulate comes from old residuals, poetry, and favors to men . . . I love the Negro race and I will accept money only from Negroes.”1999, Luc Sante, Melissa Holbrook Pierson, O.K. You Mugs: Writers on Movie Actors, page 30
To gradually go in and out of mental focus.
- This was woozing through my mind and the voices spoke again.1971, Edith M. Osborn, Short Visit to Ergon, page 7
- This old song from Simon and Garfunkel woozes its way up and I'm hearing the lyric, 'Time it was, and what a time it was: a time of innocence, a time of confidences'.2006, John Earp, Sweet Heavenly Daze: A Memoir of the Afterlife, →ISBN, page 1
To move sinuously.
- He had floated up from the bottom and he grinned at us horribly from his bullet-shattered skull as he slowly woozed away from us downstream leaving a wake of stinking bubbles behind him.1927, The Military Surgeon, page 142
- Albert P. Rockwood described these springs: 'The spring was a muddy, sulfry, cold and black nasty water that woozed through the mire and formed...1997, David Romney Crockett, Saints find the place: a day-by-day pioneer experience, page 309

Examples of wooze in a sentence

Knights, knights—you'll scare yourself sleepless with such! no knights there are anymore—just wicked little winglings who will not wooze when they should.2014, Tad Williams, The Very Best of Tad Williams, →ISBN, page 237:
Daylong you swayed and woozed, sunstruck atop a camel's hump, halfway gaga, your sand-coated tongue a breaded cutlet.2002, Roger Fanning, Homesick, →ISBN, page 10:
'I love yoooo,' she woozed in English, as Sergei, with a static grin, refilled my glass.2000, Marc Llewellyn, Riders to the Midnight Sun: From the Black Sea to the Russian Arctic:
Nerone was attacked from both sides and Treno woozed around on his knees, all while Fabbrizio sat watching.2008, John Domini, A Tomb on the Periphery, →ISBN, page 186:

Forms of wooze

Noun
plural	woozes
Verb
third-person singular present	woozes
present participle	woozing
past participle	woozed
past	woozed

Origin of wooze

From Middle English wosen, from Old English wōsan, variant of wēsan. Doublet of ooze.

Questions about wooze

What does wooze mean?: Wooze means a liquid formed by leaching bark that is used for soaking hides during the tanning process.
How do you use wooze in a sentence?: Knights, knights—you'll scare yourself sleepless with such! no knights there are anymore—just wicked little winglings who will not wooze when they should.
What part of speech is wooze?: Wooze can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of wooze?: The plural of wooze is woozes.

Words near wooze in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: wooze (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: 2026-09-02

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