swoose

swoose

See also: Swoose

English

Etymology

Blend of swan +‎ goose

Noun

swoose (plural swooses or sweese)

1. (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.

2. (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."

3. (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.

See also

• guck