woozy adj.
1. (orig. US) vague, befuddled, dizzy or unwell, esp. from a blow to the head.
![]() | Chimmie Fadden Explains 103: When she got over lookin wuzzy wid de jolt, she begins t’ laugh. | |
![]() | Wolfville 66: I’m in a daze an’ sorter woozy. | |
![]() | DN II:i 70: woozy, adj. Confused. | ‘College Words and Phrases’ in|
![]() | St Paul Globe (MN) 7 Aug. 27/2: She’s only wuzzy. Say, beau, she ain’t dead no more’n a rabbit. | |
![]() | You Can Search Me 33: A ride through this tunnel on a hot day will put you over on Woosey Avenue quicker than a No. 9 pill in Hop Lee’s smoke factory. | |
![]() | Psmith Journalist (1993) 247: He’s still woozy. | |
![]() | Plastic Age 107: You ’ll just get woozy if you stay up any longer. | |
![]() | AS V:3 239: Woozy: uncomfortable. ‘That subject always gives me a woozy feeling.’. | ‘Colgate University Sl.’ in|
![]() | Hull Dly Mail 17 Sept. 7/3: I’m getting so woozy in the bean that I’m beginning to think it impossible. | |
![]() | Farewell, My Lovely (1949) 69: I think you’re still woozy from that crack on the head. | |
![]() | Among You Taking Notes 31 Dec. 224: Slightly better but a bit wuzzy after a big dose of dial last night. | |
![]() | Bound for Glory (1969) 205: I ain’t sick! Little woozie. | |
![]() | Popular Detective Sept. 🌐 You look whoozy, Klump. Here, take the bottle. | ‘When a Body Meets a Body’ in|
![]() | Till Human Voices Wake Us 119: Even the wooziest idealist has it over the materialist in one respect. | |
![]() | (con. 1920s–30s) Youngblood (1956) 421: He was slightly drunk, what with the closeness and the smoke his head felt woozy. | |
![]() | Big Rumble 121: He wasn’t drunk but when he came to the project entrance he felt woozie and ready for a good sleep. | |
![]() | Pimp 54: The fresh air was like a blast of oxygen. It made me woozy. | |
![]() | One to Count Cadence (1987) 66: My head hurt and I was still whoozy. | |
![]() | Come Monday Morning 106: He felt really whoozy now he couldn’t seem to think straight. | |
![]() | Picture Palace 27: I was tired, my bones ached, I felt woozy. | |
![]() | Skin Tight 133: He spent the time making idle conversation with the woozy Chemo. | |
![]() | How to Kiss a Crocodile 86: My head started to spin and I felt a bit woosy. | |
![]() | Powder 53: Wheezer felt woozy at the warm familiarity of Guy’s use of his nickname and instantly despised his own weakness. | |
![]() | Wind & Monkey (2013) [ebook] ‘So, how were you when you woke up this morning, Digger?’ ‘Quite woozey,’ she answered. | |
![]() | Campus Sl. Nov. 4: hoozy – light-headed, absent-minded: I didn’t get any work done yesterday because my new medications made me feel so hoozy. | |
![]() | Gutted 215: I stood up, felt a bit woozy. Immediately slid back down the side of the ambulance. | |
![]() | (con. 1973) Johnny Porno 157: Too woozy to inquire with the super, John headed up to his apartment. | |
![]() | ? (Pronounced Que) [ebook] Chuck was getting woozy from all the blows. | |
![]() | Glorious Heresies 211: [H]e’d had a couple of pints [...] that left him vexingly woozy. | |
![]() | Dead Man’s Trousers 115: He starts tae get a bit woozy. | |
![]() | Bobby March Will Live Forever 295: [He] still felt a bit woozy. Coke and mandies – not the best combination. |
2. (orig. US) sentimental, affectionate; thus wooziness n., sentimentality.
![]() | Tales of the Ex-Tanks 22: The fellow [...] handed up an old leather violin case. That made me sort o’ woozy [...] when I was a kid my father had tried for several years to drum some violin music into me . | |
![]() | Bar-20 ix: Then when he got woozy one time she up an’ told him that she had got a nice long letter from her hubby. | |
![]() | Gangster Girl 48: He’s got this Schuyder moll [...] woozy about him. | |
![]() | Breakfast on Pluto 42: One minute I’m there as black and broody as ever a woman could be [...] and the next I’m gone all woozy, like never till the end of time will I leave this lovely man. | |
![]() | Observer 9 Jan. 29/4: We, too, are scared [...] We dress up our refusal to speak plainly in woozy therapeutic language. |
3. (US campus) pleasant, enjoyable.
![]() | Student Sl. in Cohen (1997) 23: woozy [...] 2. Pleasant, delightful. ‘You are going to the hop? How woozy!’. |
4. (US) keen on, interested in (other than romantically).
![]() | Out for the Coin 13: ‘Who put you woozy to this Wall Street fight?’ inquired Bunch. | |
![]() | Roads of Destiny 64: A woman gets woozy on clothes. |
5. (orig. US) befuddled or dizzy as a result of being under the influence of drugs or drink.
![]() | Dly Arizona Silver Belt (Gila Co., AZ) 8 Nov. 5/1: All dis talk about is drinkin’ wood alky is woozy language. We was drinkin’ straight alky, and there was no lumber about it. | |
![]() | Best Plays 13: Save for the fact that its youthful hero becomes slightly woozy with liquor, ‘Tommy’ is as clean as a kennel of hounds’ teeth. | et al.|
![]() | Limits & Renewals (1932) 356: He had kept himself going on rum sometimes, and was woozy when the pinch came. | |
![]() | Silver Eagle 34: ‘Honest, August, do you enjoy that stuff? [i.e. beer] I mean do you like to get woozy?’. | |
![]() | What Makes Sammy Run? 56: I was feeling pretty woozy from all that liquor. | |
![]() | Vanity Row 42: She was slender and young and her eyes were woozy with champagne. | |
![]() | S.R.O. (1998) 15: Twenty-four hours without a single drink and I was still woozy, still half-drunk. | |
![]() | Daily Tel. 17 Jan. 17/2: Liquid lunches can leave a man weak and woozy late in the afternoon, drinkers were told. | |
![]() | Subterranean Kerouac 171: On the bus from New York to California, high on Benzedrine and woozy on liquor. | |
![]() | Girlfriends 33: She sat in the back of the cab feeling woozy and nauseated. She knew she would inevitably puke from all the liquor. | |
![]() | A Steady Rain I iii: Connie was woozy from the valium, the scotch. | |
![]() | Champions 111: Whatever booze he’d ingested didn’t make him woozy at all. | |
![]() | Bloody January 11: [of cannabis] Didn’t take long to kick in. He felt a bit woozy, good. |
6. (US) old-fashioned, staid [? wowser n.1 (1)].
![]() | Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 22 May 2/3: ‘The Players’ Club’ [...] is not a popular institution. It is too exclusive, solemn: too ‘woosey.’ as Jane Stuart would say. | |
![]() | Student Sl. in Cohen (1997) 23: woozy [...] 1. [...] behind the times. |
7. mad, eccentric; old-fashioned.
![]() | Student Sl. in Cohen (1997) 23: woozy [...] 1. Foolish. | |
![]() | Girl Proposition 56: They would be giving him the Giggle and saying he was the wooziest ever. | |
![]() | ‘Lord Ballyrot in Slangland’ in Tacoma Times (WA) 14 Jan. 4/4: Any time you see me puffing a fag just mark me down as getting woozy. | |
![]() | His Last Bow in Baring-Gould (1968) II 798: ‘The man was mad.’ ‘Well, he went a bit woozy towards the end.’. | |
![]() | Nightmare Town (2001) 363: He was always a bit on the goofy side [...] And it’s a cinch this magazine stuff he’s been doing lately is woozy. | ‘The First Thin Man’ in|
![]() | Till Human Voices Wake Us 182: He’s a good chap [...] but he is fairly woozy. |
In derivatives
1. eccentricity.
![]() | Tales of the Ex-Tanks 350: These meetings are going to be allowed to degenerate into exploitations of Longfellowish wooziness. |
2. a sense of mental instability, e.g. that following a blow to the head.
![]() | Manic-depressive Disease 116: Headache and ‘wooziness’ play a definite role in the mental retardation. | |
![]() | Till Human Voices Wake Us 173: There was a certain wooziness of expression [...] unsuccessful fumbling for the right words. | |
![]() | Bach Flower Remedies 88: JT is a sixty-five-year-old ex-weight-lifter who had been having attacks of ‘wooziness’ and lightheadedness. | |
![]() | Daughter of Fortune 304: Sometimes she awoke with Tom No-Tribe in her arms, imagining in the wooziness of half sleep that it was Tao Chi’en. | |
![]() | Not Enough Indians 39: Dick fought off the wooziness of his pain medication. |