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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

louse.

A small parasitic wingless insect of the order Psocodea.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/laʊs/UK

  1. A small parasitic wingless insect of the order Psocodea.

  2. A contemptible person; one who is deceitful or causes harm.

    colloquial · dated

  3. The currency sign ¤.

    slang
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *lewH-? Proto-Germanic *lūs Proto-West Germanic *lūs Old English lūs Middle English lous English louse From Middle English lous, lows, lowse, from Old English lūs, from Proto-West Germanic *lūs, from Proto-Germanic *lūs, from Proto-Indo-European *lewH-. Cognate with West Frisian lûs, Dutch luis, German Low German Luus, German Laus, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish lus, Faroese and Icelandic lús; also Welsh llau (“lice”), Tocharian B luwo, maybe Sanskrit यूका (yūkā).

verb/laʊs/UK

  1. To remove lice from; to delouse.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *lewH-? Proto-Germanic *lūs Proto-West Germanic *lūs Old English lūs Middle English lous English louse From Middle English lous, lows, lowse, from Old English lūs, from Proto-West Germanic *lūs, from Proto-Germanic *lūs, from Proto-Indo-European *lewH-. Cognate with West Frisian lûs, Dutch luis, German Low German Luus, German Laus, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish lus, Faroese and Icelandic lús; also Welsh llau (“lice”), Tocharian B luwo, maybe Sanskrit यूका (yūkā).

verb

  1. Obsolete form of loose.

    alt-of · obsolete
noun

  1. Obsolete form of loose.

    alt-of · obsolete
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.