Rouse

How to spell rouse

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rouse

What does rouse mean?

1. verbTo wake someone from sleep, or to stir a person or group into action or strong feeling.

Rouse in a sentence

• The alarm failed to rouse him before the early train left.

• A sharp email from the manager can rouse the whole team into action.

Where does rouse come from?

Language of origin: French

The origin of rouse is genuinely uncertain, which is part of what makes it interesting. It first appears in English in the late 1400s as a term from falconry and hunting, where it described a hawk that shakes or ruffles its feathers, and also the action of driving game out of cover. Many scholars trace it through Anglo-French to an Old French root, though no single source word is securely attested, so the trail goes cold quite early. From those concrete hunting senses the meaning broadened to the familiar idea of stirring a sleeping creature or person into wakefulness and then into activity or strong emotion. Because the word ends in the same -ouse cluster as 'house' and 'mouse' yet sounds like a buzzing z, the spelling can feel slippery; remembering its kinship with 'arouse' (the same word with an a- prefix) helps fix the ending.

How the word is built

• rouse (single root, no productive prefix or suffix; originally a hawking term for a bird shaking its feathers)