louse v.
1. (Aus.) to search; to pilfer.
| [ | ![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | ‘A Song, How a Flat became a Prigg’ in Confessions of Thomas Mount 21: Saucy, lowsing, Billingsgate man]. |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 11 Aug. 15/2: Flash In dook, lugs cocked for the slightest alien sound, proceed to louse the joint. | |
| ‘Professor Sea Gull’ in Joe Gould’s Secret (1996) 12: A couple of generations after I’m dead and gone [...] the Ph.D’s will start lousing through my work. | |
| Ridgey-Didge Oz Jack Lang 11: The Beecham Pill had them pegged as dope fiends. [...] They were probably going to try and louse his kick for a shot of marijuana. |
2. (US) to behave badly.
| 20 Mar. [synd. col.] I am going to out-louse the lady’s husband. |
3. see louse up v. (4)
In derivatives
(Irish) hanging around on street corners.
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Emerald Square n.p.: By the time they were seventeen they were short-winded from smoking, slack from lousing at street corners [BS]. |
In phrases
1. (US) to idle, to loiter, to waste time [northern UK dial. lowse, to stop working].
| DN IV 414: Louse around [...] to play the parasite. | |
| DN V 214: Louse around [...] To loiter about aimlessly. | |
| ‘Oilfield Idyls’ in Botkin Folk-Say 149: I just racked my tools and loused around. | |
| Brain Guy (1937) 111: No use lousing around. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). | |
| Alcoholics (1993) 57: Letting him louse around in a crummy old bathrobe. | |
| (con. 1920s) Emerald Square 229: Mostly by the time they were seventeen they were shortwinded from smoking, grown slack from lousing at street corners. |
2. (US, also louse up) to mistreat someone.
| et al. DAUL 129/1: That creep loused me around for my broad...and my case dough. | |
| ‘The Cherubs Are Rumbling’ in Short Gang Delinquency and Delinquent Subcultures (1968) 26: It ain’t exactly what he did,’ Louie said.‘We just didn’t want to louse him up.’. |
see separate entries.