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