Dictionary

swoose en · NOUN

Etymology

Blend of swan + goose.

Meanings

1. (informal) An animal cross between a swan and a goose, especially one produced from a male swan and a female goose.
   • 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. 2000, Grace Marmor Spruch, Squirrels at My Window: Life With a Remarkable Gang of Urban Squirrels, Big Earth Publishing, page 22:
   • 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.” 1928 John C. Phillips, "Another "Swoose" or Swan × Goose Hybrid," The Auk, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan., 1928), pp. 39-40
   • And this one's a cross between a swan and a goose, and we call him a swoose. 1968 Jan, Samuel J. Sackett, “Another Cross-Fertilization Joke”, in Western Folklore, volume 27, number 1, pages 50–51:
   • 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”. 1920 July 13, Daily Mail:
2. (informal) A person or thing sharing the characteristics of two otherwise separate groups; a hybrid (also see Swoose)
   • 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. 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
   • "John calls teenagers 'sweese.'" "What?" "Neither swans nor geese." 2007, Susan Kelly, Now You Know, Pegasus Books, page 229:
   • 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. 2000, Claire Cloninger, Karla Worley, When the Glass Slipper Doesn't Fit, New Hope Publishers:
   • The associate in arts or A.A. degree, another "swoose," has quickly established itself as the community college degree in a degree-obsessed nation. 1970 Dec, James J. Zigerell, “The Community College in Search of an Identity”, in The Journal of Higher Education, volume 41, number 9, pages 701–712:
3. (slang) A stupid person.
   • 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!” 1920 September 5, Wisconsin State Journal:
   • 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. 1948 March 27, Sid Sidenberg, “A Pitchman's Individualism Works Against Organization”, in The Billboard, page 144:

Forms

Relateds

guck

Synonyms

gwan · goose