Booze

How to spell booze

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce booze

What does booze mean?

1. nounAlcoholic drink, used informally.
2. verbTo drink alcohol, especially heavily.

Booze in a sentence

• noun

  They stocked the cupboard with booze before the party.

• verb

  They like to booze late into the night on holiday.

• noun

  The corner shop sells cheap booze at the weekend.

• verb

  The crew would booze at the pub after every shift.

Where does booze come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

This is an informal English word for alcoholic drink that traces back to the Middle Dutch verb busen, meaning 'to drink heavily' or 'to drink to excess'. The word seems to have crossed into Middle English around the 1300s as a verb spelled in various ways such as 'bouse' or 'bowse', describing the act of drinking deeply. For centuries the spelling wandered, and the modern form 'booze' with its double 'o' only settled in during the 1700s and 1800s, when it also picked up its use as a noun for the drink itself. It has long carried a slightly disreputable, slangy flavour, which is part of why it stayed informal rather than becoming a polite term. The spelling trap is that double 'o' followed by the soft 'ze' ending, since the sound alone might tempt a writer toward 'boos' or 'booz'.

How the word is built

• booze (from Middle Dutch busen: to drink to excess); a single root with no prefix or suffix