ooze

Meanings

Noun

• Tanning liquor, an aqueous extract of vegetable matter (tanbark, sumac, etc.) in a tanning vat used to tan leather.
• An oozing, gentle flowing, or seepage, as of water through sand or earth.
• Secretion, humour.
• Juice, sap.
• Soft mud, slime, or shells especially in the bed of a river or estuary.
• A pelagic marine sediment containing a significant amount of the microscopic remains of either calcareous or siliceous planktonic debris organisms.
• A piece of soft, wet, pliable ground.

Verb

• To be secreted or slowly leak.
• To give off a strong sense of (something); to exude.

Origin

• (Noun) Middle English wose, from Old English wōs, from Proto-Germanic *wōsą (cf. Middle Low German, Old High German, Old Swedish), from Proto-Indo-European *wóseh₂ ("sap") (cf. Sanskrit वसा).
• (Verb) Middle English wosen, from wose; see above.
• From Middle English wose, from Old English wāse, from Proto-West Germanic, from Proto-Germanic *waisǭ (compare Dutch waas, (obsolete) German Wasen, Old Norse veisa), from Proto-Indo-European *weys- (compare Sanskrit विष्यति ("flow, let loose")). More at virus.