cooze

English

Etymology

Uncertain, but compare Danish kusse (“vagina”), Persian کس (kos, “vagina”), vernacular Arabic كُس (kus, “vagina”), and Northern Kurdish qûz (“vagina”). The term may have been introduced to the United States after the Second World War by servicemen who fought in north Africa, but it already existed as a slang term in the blues community as early as 1929.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kuːz/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -uːz

Noun

cooze (plural coozes)

1. (slang, vulgar) Pussy, vagina.
   • 1987, Stephen King, It:

     "It's a lot like a dead strumpet with maggots squirming out of her cooze," Don Hagarty said.

   • 1991, Rudy von Bitter Rucker, All the Visions:

     We kissed a lot, for as long as an hour sometimes, standing in the hall of her dorm, the endless slow tongue friction, the sweet smell of her, my sobbing hard-on moist in my tight undies, her cooze surely sopping.

   • 2006, National Lampoon Magazine Rack:

     The thing is, her cooze was real cute and everything but it stank!

2. (slang, derogatory) A woman (often when viewed as an object of sexual desire).
   • 1929, Blind Blake, Diddie Wa Diddie:

     I went out and looked around / Somebody yelled: "There's a cooze in town!"

   • 1990, Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried:

     I write this beautiful fuckin' letter, I slave over it, and what happens? The dumb cooze never writes back.

   • 2010, James Ellroy, Blood's a Rover:

     Okay, the Sherbourne cooze was a bilingual stewardess.

Translations

References

• “cooze”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• “Cooze”, in Infoplease Dictionary‎, (Can we date this quote?)
• Spears, Richard A. (1991) Slang and Euphemism, New York: Signet, →ISBN