oozy

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈuːzi/

• Audio (Canada)

  (file)

• Homophone: uzi

Etymology

ooze +‎ -y

Adjective

oozy (comparative oozier, superlative ooziest)

1. Of or pertaining to the quality of something that oozes.
   • 1611, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V,

     A daughter? / O heavens, that they were living both in Naples, / The king and queen there! that they were, I wish / Myself were mudded in that oozy bed / Where my son lies.

   • 1844, Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, Chapter Thirteen, [1]

     [The rain] fell with an oozy, slushy sound among the grass; and made a muddy kennel of every furrow in the ploughed fields.

   • 1912, James Stephens, Mary, Mary (published in the UK as The Charwoman's Daughter), New York: Boni & Liveright, Chapter XXIV, p. 175, [2]

     Her vocabulary could not furnish her with the qualifying word, or rather, epithet for his bigness. Horrible was suggested and retained, but her instinct clamored that there was a fat, oozy word somewhere which would have brought comfort to her brains and her hands and feet.

   • 1918, Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism, London: Macmillan & Co., p. 38, [3]

     Each country is casting its net of espionage into the slimy bottom of the others, fishing for their secrets, the treacherous secrets which brew in the oozy depths of diplomacy.

   • 1922, Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt, New York: P.F. Collier & Son, Chapter IX, I, p. 123, [4]

     […] he gulped down a chill and glutinous slice of the ice-cream brick, and cocoanut cake as oozy as shaving-cream.

   • 2015, Vincent Giroud, Nicolas Nabokov: A Life in Freedom and Music, Oxford University Press, Chapter 1, [5]

     On birthdays and saints' days, Jewish musicians from the local community were invited to perform festive music and played "an extraordinary variety of music: potpourris of famous operas, military marches, Viennese waltzes, and the ooziest gypsy songs and Jewish dances, rampant with glissandos, tremolos, and tearful vibratos."