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swoose - What does it mean?

Definition of 'swoose'

English

Noun

(en-noun)
  • (informal) An animal born to a male swan and a female goose
  • * 1920 13 July, Daily Mail
  • 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”.
  • * 1928 John C. Phillips, "Another "Swoose" or Swan × Goose Hybrid," The Auk , Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan., 1928), pp. 39-40
  • 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 .”
  • * 1968 Samuel J. Sackett, "Another Cross-Fertilization Joke," Western Folklore , Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp. 50-51
  • And this one's a cross between a swan and a goose, and we call him a swoose.
  • * 2000 Grace Marmor Spruch, Squirrels at My Window: Life With a Remarkable Gang of Urban Squirrels , Big Earth Publishing, p22
  • 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.
  • (informal) A person or thing sharing the characteristics of two otherwise separate groups; a hybrid (also see Swoose)
  • * 1970 James J. Zigerell, "The Community College in Search of an Identity," The Journal of Higher Education , Vol. 41, No. 9 (Dec., 1970), pp. 701-712
  • The associate in arts or A.A. degree, another "swoose ," has quickly established itself as the community college degree in a degree-obsessed nation.
  • * 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
  • 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.
  • * 2000 Claire Cloninger, Karla Worley, When the Glass Slipper Doesn't Fit, New Hope Publishers
  • 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.
  • * 2007 Susan Kelly, Now You Know, Pegasus Books, p229
  • "John calls teenagers 'sweese.' " "What?" "Neither swans nor geese."
  • (slang) A stupid person (also see goose)
  • * 1920 5 September, Wisconsin State Journal
  • 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 !”
  • * 1948 27 March, Sid Sidenberg, "A Pitchman's Individualism Works Against Organization," The Billboard, p144.
  • 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.