# moose

Pronunciation: say "MOOS" /muːs/

## Noun

1. The largest member of the deer family, found in northern forests, the male of which has very large, broad, flattened antlers; also, any of several similar extinct deer (genera Cervalces and Libralces).
   - Simple: A very large deer whose males have broad, flat antlers, or a similar kind of deer that no longer lives.
   - _A bull moose can be dangerous in the fall, when it will charge anything that comes too close._
   - _From the canoe we watched two moose wading slowly through the shallows._
2. An insulting word for a person considered ugly. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: A rude word for a person who is thought to be ugly.
   - _She overheard him telling his friends that his blind date had been a moose._
   - _Kids can be cruel: the boys in her class called her a moose all through eighth grade._

## Other meanings

- (noun) An Asian girl or young woman taken as a lover, especially by a serviceman stationed overseas.

## Origin

English first had the forms mus and moos, taken from what Eastern Algonquian languages called the animal, for example Massachusett moos, Narragansett moos, or Penobscot mos. These go back to Proto-Algonquian *mo·swa ("it strips"), since a feeding moose strips bark from trees.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/moose (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).