doze

Formsdozes, dozing, dozed

Pluraldozes

1. 1
   verbintransitive

   To sleep lightly or briefly.

   Travelers often doze on long flights to pass the time.

   He dozed by the fire until the phone rang.

   Similarnap, snooze, drowse, slumber, catnap

   Oppositewake

   Note

   A Norse borrowing: Old Norse dúsa meant "to doze, rest, remain quiet," and behind it lies a Germanic root meaning "to be dizzy." The verb is often softened with a small measure of time or degree, as in dozed a bit or doze a little. Roger L'Estrange's 1692 phrase "Doze a little now and then in a Morning" shows that habit is old.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A light, short period of sleep.

   A pleasant doze on the porch ended when the dog barked.

   Short dozes during the day disrupted his nighttime sleep.

   Similarnap, snooze, catnap, siesta, kip

   Note

   The noun usually comes with a light article or measure: a short doze, a bit of a doze, have a doze. Norman Lindsay's Mrs Dibble, in Dust or Polish? (1950), escapes an awkward topic with "I think I better have a bit of a doze." It also works as a state you fall into, as with students who "drooped over their desks in a doze."

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To dull the mind or senses; to stupefy.

   The drug dozed his reflexes until he could barely lift a hand.

   Long hours of monotony doze the brightest minds into lethargy.

   Similardull, stupefy, numb, deaden

   Oppositesharpen, stimulate

   Note

   Here the dullness is done to someone, and the root meaning "to be dizzy" shows through more plainly than in the napping verb. It typically appears in the passive. Samuel Pepys in 1666 is "dozed with much work," and Robert South in 1693 pairs it with benumbed. Modern readers may take it for the sleep sense, so the cause is usually named: dozed with work, dozed by monotony.

4. 4
   verbslangintransitive

   To clear, level, or shift earth by operating a bulldozer.

   The operators dozed all day on the new subdivision.

   Contractors doze along the riverbank every dry season.

   Similarbulldoze, grade

   Note

   A different word that happens to share a spelling: a slang clipping of bulldoze, with no tie to the napping verb. Because the two look identical, a sentence like "the crew dozed all afternoon" can be read either way. The surrounding talk of ground, sites and machines usually settles it. In careful writing, the full bulldoze avoids the stumble.

5. 5
   determinerpronunciation spelling

   Pronunciation spelling of those.

   Doze are the ones I told you about.

   He kept staring at doze old photos for hours.

   Note

   An eye-dialect spelling that renders the voiced th of those as a d, a feature known as th-stopping. It shows a speaker's accent in written dialogue and is not a separate word. It travels with dis and de: Don Rosa's Recalled Wreck (1987) gives a character "dis house" and "de winning number." Grammatically it behaves exactly like those, as a plural determiner or pronoun.

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