wowser
/ˈwaʊzə(ɹ)/
wowser noun: one with strong moral views against alcohol, gambling, pornography, etc., who seeks to promulgate those views; a censorious, self-righteous, puritanical person who tries to stop others from having fun. Also the alternative form of wowzer.
Noun
wowser (plural wowsers)
- One with strong moral views against alcohol, gambling, pornography, etc., who seeks to promulgate those views; a censorious, self-righteous, puritanical person who tries to stop others from having fun.
- “I’d like to come with you one day up to the top end,” she said. “I suppose it’ll have to be after we’re married.”
He grinned. “Plenty of wowsers back in Willstown to talk about it, if you came before.”1950, Neville Shute, chapter 9, in A Town Like Alice, London: The Reprint Society, published 1952, page 259 - As for the rest, the pay is not bad, coming as it does from the pockets of the three local warlords who hired me: two graziers, one of whom is also a terrible wowser (everyone calls him 'Mr Prophet', though I call him - privately, of course - Mr Brimstone, or Old Blood-and-Thunderguts); the third...1996, Janette Turner Hospital, Oyster, paperback edition, Virago Press, page 65
- Synonyms:
- killjoy, moral crusader, party pooper, prude, spoilsport
- “I’d like to come with you one day up to the top end,” she said. “I suppose it’ll have to be after we’re married.”
Also used as
wowser is also the alternative form of wowzer.
wowser is also the alternative form of wowsers.
Synonyms of wowser
- killjoy
- moral crusader
- party pooper
- prude
- spoilsport
Forms of wowser
| plural | wowsers |
|---|
Origin of wowser
From UK dialect. Australian from late 1890s. John Norton, an early enemy of wowsers, claimed it to be an acronym for "We Only Want Social Evils Remedied", but that is likely a folk etymology. A story has it that gospellers in the streets of Clunes, Victoria in the 1870s were called rousers but one of the town councillors had a speech impediment and couldn't pronounce his "R"s, thus giving wowser. (Reference: Bill Wannan, Australian Folklore, Lansdowne Press, 1970, reprint 1979 →ISBN, under "Wowser", page 568.)
Origin unknown. # (US) A fierce imaginary animal. #* 1968, Squire Omar Barker, Rawhide Rhymes: Singing Poems of the Old West, page 10: Well, a wowser is the critter That the nester's little daughter is afraid will come and git her In case she fails to wash her neck and mind her pa and ma, For what the ring-tailed wowser likes is little gals to chaw. At least she's heard the cowboys thus describe this wondrous beast With one green eye a-lookin' west, a red one lookin' east. But speaking scientifickly, the wowser is a cross Between the cattywampus and and the dry-land albatross With parts of grizzly bear throwed in, and just enough of 'coon To give him rings around his tail, like rings around the moon. From wow, with the "-ser" added to provide emphasis.
Words formed from wowser
Words that rhyme with wowser
Questions about wowser
- What does wowser mean?
- Wowser means one with strong moral views against alcohol, gambling, pornography, etc., who seeks to promulgate those views; a censorious, self-righteous, puritanical person who tries to stop others from having fun.
- What part of speech is wowser?
- Wowser is a noun.
- How do you pronounce wowser?
- Wowser is pronounced /ˈwaʊzə(ɹ)/.
- What is the plural of wowser?
- The plural of wowser is wowsers.
Words near wowser in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wowser (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-au-wowser.ogg.
Cite this entry: “wowser.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wowser. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.