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moose

Pronunciation: /muːs/

The English word “moose” has 4 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. The largest member of the deer family (Alces americanus, sometimes included in Alces alces), of which the male has very large, palmate antlers.
  2. Any of the extinct moose-like deer of the genera Cervalces and Libralces.
  3. An ugly person.
  4. An Asian girl taken as a lover.

Etymology

Earlier mus, moos, from an Eastern Algonquian language name for the animal, such as Massachusett moos, mws, Narragansett moos or Penobscot mos (cognate to Abenaki moz), from Proto-Algonquian *mo·swa (“it strips”), referring to how a moose strips tree bark when feeding: compare Massachusett moos-u (“he strips, cuts smooth”).

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.