Citations:swoose

Noun: "an animal born to a swan and goose"

 * 1) * 1920 13 July, Daily Mail
 * 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”.
 * 1) * 1928 John C. Phillips, "Another "Swoose" or Swan × Goose Hybrid," The Auk, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jan., 1928), pp. 39-40
 * 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.”
 * 1) * 1929 Popular Science (March, 1929), p35
 * What is it? It's a "swoose" - the only one in the world - a cross between a Canadian goose and an Australian swan.
 * 1) * 1941 Ben Forrest, Glenn Burrs & Franklin Furlett, song: "Alexander the Swoose," originally performed by Kay Kyser and His Band, published by A-1 Music
 * Swoose, swoose, Alexander is a swoose. Half a swan, half a goose, Alexander is a swoose.
 * 1) * 1948 Grace de la Croix Daigre, "'Swoose' and Boy Get Around," The Rotarian, September 1948, p.1
 * It was definitely exciting to see Isiah, the colored boy, and our "Swoose" (a true cross between a swan and a goose) in our magazine.
 * 1) * 1957 John William Blythe, A modern introduction to logic, Houghton Mifflin, 1957, p147
 * If the term "swoose" is defined as formally equivalent to the term "half swan and half goose," it follows that these terms are materially equivalent and that it is true that all sweese and only sweese are half swans and half geese. But it doesn't follow that there are any sweese.
 * 1) * 1968 Samuel J. Sackett, "Another Cross-Fertilization Joke," Western Folklore, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp. 50-51
 * And this one's a cross between a swan and a goose, and we call him a swoose.
 * 1) * 1970 James J. Zigerell, "The Community College in Search of an Identity," The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 41, No. 9 (Dec., 1970), pp. 701-712
 * A nonsense song of my youth was about a "swoose," who was half swan and half goose.
 * 1) * 2000 Grace Marmor Spruch, Squirrels at My Window: Life With a Remarkable Gang of Urban Squirrels, Big Earth Publishing, p22
 * 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.
 * 1) * 2006 John Ayto, Movers and shakers: a chronology of words that shaped our age, Oxford University Press, p59
 * Such items are meat and drink to journalists and headline writers, and if you can combine them with (more or less) cuddly animals, you have neologisms to die for – hence the extensive press coverage given to swooses (a swan crossed with a goose), tigons (the offspring of a tiger and a lion), and (later) ligers (1938).

Noun: "a hybrid"

 * 1) * 1936 The Unitarian Register, p167
 * In their political careers they are "swooses," swimming with any tide, representatives of "swoosery" in the popular state of mind.
 * 1) * 1970 James J. Zigerell, "The Community College in Search of an Identity," The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 41, No. 9 (Dec., 1970), pp. 701-712
 * The associate in arts or A.A. degree, another "swoose," has quickly established itself as the community college degree in a degree-obsessed nation.
 * 1) * 1977 "Customs procedural reform act of 1977: hearings before the Subcommittee on Trade of the Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives, Ninety-fifth Congress, first session, on H.R. 8149," p229
 * Let's not have a "swoose." We have a goose and a swan. We have a swoose. That is what we have in customs right now.
 * 1) * 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
 * 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.
 * 1) * 2000 Claire Cloninger, Karla Worley, When the Glass Slipper Doesn't Fit, New Hope Publishers
 * 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.
 * 1) * 2007 Susan Kelly, Now You Know, Pegasus Books, p229
 * "John calls teenagers 'sweese.'" "What?" "Neither swans nor geese."

Noun: "a stupid person"

 * 1) * 1920 5 September, Wisconsin State Journal
 * 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!”
 * 1) * 1948 27 March, Sid Sidenberg, "A Pitchman's Individualism Works Against Organization," The Billboard, p144.
 * 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.