From Middle French mors, from Latin morsus (“bite; clasp”), from mordere (“to bite”).
Meanings
A clasp or fastening used to fasten a cope in the front, usually decorative.
The morse bore a seraph's head in gold-thread raised work. 1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter XI, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC:
Uncertain, perhaps ultimately from Proto-Samic *moršë. Compare Russian морж (morž, “walrus”), Sami morša, Finnish mursu (all attested later), and possibly the second element of translingual Rosmarus.
Meanings
(obsolete) Synonym of walrus.
The morse is said to roar or bellow loudly, but the animal we slew made no outcry, [...] 1829, [Robert Pearse Gillies], “The Voyage. (Continued.)”, in Tales of a Voyager to the Arctic Ocean. […] (Second Series), volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 66:
Then we passed through a great deale of small ice, and sawe, upon some peices, two morses, and upon some, one; and also diuers seales, layeing upon peices of ice. 1880, Clements R Markham, editor, The Voyages of William Baffin, 1612-1622, published 1881: