A.Word.A.Day --chouse

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Yesterday's Word

chouse

PRONUNCIATION:

(chous)

MEANING:

verb tr.:
1. To cheat or trick.
2. To drive or herd in a rough manner.

ETYMOLOGY:

For 1: Perhaps from chiaus (the word for an official in the Ottoman Empire), one such official defrauded people.
For 2: Origin unknown.

Cartoonist: Doug Pike

pawky: cunning
loo: a card game in which forfeits are put into a pool

USAGE:

"Rightly viewed, calf-butchering accounts for Titus Andronicus, the only play -- ain't it? -- that the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and yet it is the only one everybody tries to chouse him out of."
Mark Twain; Is Shakespeare Dead? Harper & Brothers; 1909.

"And there are lots of squirrels. Like the pair of gray squirrels chasing and chousing each other through the branches and up and down the vine-covered trunk of a tall pin oak tree."
Mike Leggett; Memories of Youth Found on Squirrel Hunts; Austin American-Statesman; Oct 17, 2004.

See more usage examples of chouse in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

There will be no Homeland Security until we realize that the entire planet is our homeland. Every sentient being in the world must feel secure. -John Perkins, economist and author (b.1945)

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