wooze

English

Etymology

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

Noun

wooze (countable and uncountable, plural woozes)

1. A liquid formed by leaching bark that is used for soaking hides during the tanning process.
   • 1772, Richard Burn, The Justice of the Peace, and Parish Officer, volume III, page 84:

     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; [...]

   • 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. […], London: Printed by the executors of David Hay, assignee of the late Boulter Grierson, […], →OCLC, page 183:

     [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; [...]

   • 1856, English Patents of Inventions, page 4:

     Afterwards put them into handlers with a part of the bark which comes out of the leaches or tubs, and fill them up with a weak wooze; in this situation they are to remain for about two or three weeks, more or less, handling them, however, during that time once or twice every day; this operation takes the lime out which the hides may contain, and prepares them for the tannage.

2. A state of wooziness.
   • 2013, Norman Spinrad, Russian Spring, →ISBN:

     "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.

   • 2014, James Ellroy, Perfidia, →ISBN:

     He felt that postbennie wooze.

Verb

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

1. To soak hides in wooze.
   • 1856, English Patents of Inventions:

     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.

2. To cause to feel woozy.
   • 1982, Evelyn Waugh Newsletter - Volumes 16-24, page 22:

     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.

   • 1995, Anne Taylor Fleming, Motherhood Deferred: A Woman's Journey, →ISBN, page 97:

     I am woozed out with a sedative, wheeled into the operating room, ...

3. To become woozy or sleepy.
   • 2006, Janet Taylor Lisle, Black duck, →ISBN, page 191:

     My head was feeling strange, woozing in and woozing out.

   • 2010, Richard Marcinko, Designation Gold Rogue Warrior, →ISBN, page 241:

     As I woozed, he gut-punched me.

   • 2014, Tad Williams, The Very Best of Tad Williams, →ISBN, page 237:

     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.

   • 2018, Lionel Shriver, The Self-Seeding Sycamore:

     Those expert administrations as she woozed in his overgrown grass were hazy, but she did remember the black T-shirt bunched under her head, its distinctive must, and the vivid, bumpy journey to the clinic.

4. To move or function while in a daze.
   • 1964, P. S. Barrows, More about Scheherazade, page 194:

     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.

   • 1991, John Balaban, Remembering heaven's face: a moral witness in Vietnam, page 178:

     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.

   • 2002, Roger Fanning, Homesick, →ISBN, page 10:

     Daylong you swayed and woozed, sunstruck atop a camel's hump, halfway gaga, your sand-coated tongue a breaded cutlet.

5. To speak while intoxicated; to say in a slurred voice.
   • 1998, John Kane, Best Actress, →ISBN, page 122:

     "Click Dark," woozed Amber, "nice to meet ya."

   • 1999, Luc Sante, Melissa Holbrook Pierson, O.K. You Mugs: Writers on Movie Actors, page 30:

     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.”

   • 2000, Marc Llewellyn, Riders to the Midnight Sun: From the Black Sea to the Russian Arctic:

     'I love yoooo,' she woozed in English, as Sergei, with a static grin, refilled my glass.

6. To gradually go in and out of mental focus.
   • 1971, Edith M. Osborn, Short Visit to Ergon, page 7:

     This was woozing through my mind and the voices spoke again.

   • 2006, John Earp, Sweet Heavenly Daze: A Memoir of the Afterlife, →ISBN, page 1:

     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'.

7. To move sinuously.
   • 1927, The Military Surgeon, page 142:

     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.

   • 1997, David Romney Crockett, Saints find the place: a day-by-day pioneer experience, page 309:

     Albert P. Rockwood described these springs: 'The spring was a muddy, sulfry, cold and black nasty water that woozed through the mire and formed...

   • 2008, John Domini, A Tomb on the Periphery, →ISBN, page 186:

     Nerone was attacked from both sides and Treno woozed around on his knees, all while Fabbrizio sat watching.