rouse

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹaʊz/
• Rhymes: -aʊz

From Middle English rousen, from Anglo-Norman reuser, ruser, originally used in English of hawks shaking the feathers of the body, from Latin recusare, by loss of the medial 'c.' Related to Provencal reusar.

Figurative meaning "to stir up, provoke to activity" is from 1580s; that of "awaken" is first recorded 1590s.

• rouze (obsolete)

rouse (plural rouses)

1. An arousal.
2. (military, Britain and Canada) The sounding of a bugle in the morning after reveille, to signal that soldiers are to rise from bed, often the rouse.

rouse (third-person singular simple present rouses, present participle rousing, simple past and past participle roused)

1. To wake (someone) or be awoken from sleep, or from apathy.
   • c. 1605, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act III, Scene 2,

     Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;

     Night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

   • 1687, Francis Atterbury, An Answer to Some Considerations on the Spirit of Martin Luther, Oxford, pp. 41-42,

     As for the heat, with which he treated his other adversaries, ’twas sometimes strain’d a little too far, but in the general was extremely well fitted by the Providence of God to rowse up a people, the most phlegmatic of any in Christendome.

   • 1713, Alexander Pope, Ode for Musick, London: Bernard Lintott, stanza 2, p. 3,

     At Musick, Melancholy lifts her Head;

     Dull Morpheus rowzes from his Bed;

   • 1979, Bernard Malamud, Dubin’s Lives, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, Chapter Eight, p. 284,

     Dubin slept through the ringing alarm, aware of Kitty trying to rouse him and then letting him sleep.

2. To cause, stir up, excite (a feeling, thought, etc.).

   to rouse the faculties, passions, or emotions

   • 1719, Daniel Defoe, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, London: W. Taylor, p. 127,

     […] their first Step in Dangers, after the common Efforts are over, was always to despair, lie down under it, and die, without rousing their Thoughts up to proper Remedies for Escape.

   • 1848, Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, London: John Murray, 1900, Chapter 27,

     ‘You may think it all very fine, Mr. Huntingdon, to amuse yourself with rousing my jealousy; but take care you don’t rouse my hate instead. And when you have once extinguished my love, you will find it no easy matter to kindle it again.’

   • 1961, V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas, Penguin, 1992, Part Two, Chapter 5, p. 494,

     […] he had grown to look upon houses as things that concerned other people, like churches, butchers’ stalls, cricket matches and football matches. They had ceased to rouse ambition or misery. He had lost the vision of the house.

3. To provoke (someone) to action or anger.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 2, lines 284-287,

     He scarce had finisht, when such murmur filld

     Th’ Assembly, as when hollow Rocks retain

     The sound of blustring winds, which all night long

     Had rous’d the Sea […]

   • 1818, Jane Austen, Persuasion, Chapter 12,

     “A surgeon!” said Anne.

     He caught the word; it seemed to rouse him at once, and saying only—“True, true, a surgeon this instant,” was darting away, when Anne eagerly suggested—

     “Captain Benwick, would not it be better for Captain Benwick? […] ”

   • 1932, William Faulkner, Light in August, New York: Modern Library, 1968, Chapter 12, p. 254,

     He tried to argue with her. But it was like trying to argue with a tree: she did not even rouse herself to deny, she just listened quietly and then talked again in that level, cold tone as if he had never spoken.

   • 1980, J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, Penguin, 1982, p. 108,

     The words they stopped me from uttering may have been very paltry indeed, hardly words to rouse the rabble.

4. To cause to start from a covert or lurking place.

   to rouse a deer or other animal of the chase

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, London: William Ponsonbie, Book 2, Canto 11, p. 350,

     Deformed creatures, in straunge difference,

     Some hauing heads like Harts, some like to Snakes,

     Some like wilde Bores late rouzd out of the brakes,

   • c. 1609, William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Act III, Scene 3,

     Hark, the game is roused!

   • 1713, Alexander Pope, Windsor-Forest, London: Bernard Lintott, p. 7,

     The Youth rush eager to the Sylvan War;

     Swarm o’er the Lawns, the Forest Walks surround,

     Rowze the fleet Hart, and chear the opening Hound.

5. (nautical) To pull by main strength; to haul.
   • 1832, Frederick Marryat, Newton Forster; or, The Merchant Service, London: James Cochrane, Volume 1, Chapter 5, p. 71,

     Tom, you and the boy rouse the cable up—get about ten fathoms on deck, and bend it.

6. (obsolete) To raise; to make erect.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, London: William Ponsonbie, Book 1, Canto 11, p. 157,

     And ouer, all with brasen scales was armd,

     Like plated cote of steele, so couched neare,

     That nought mote perce, ne might his corse bee harmd

     With dint of swerd, nor push of pointed speare,

     Which as an Eagle, seeing pray appeare,

     His aery plumes doth rouze, full rudely dight,

     So shaked he, that horror was to heare,

     For as the clashing of an Armor bright,

     Such noyse his rouzed scales did send vnto the knight.

   • c. 1598, William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3,

     He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

     Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,

     And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

7. (slang, when followed by "on") To tell off; to criticise.

   He roused on her for being late yet again.

• (to wake someone from sleep): bring round, roust, wake up; see also Thesaurus:awaken
• (to be awoken from sleep): arise, get up, wake up; see also Thesaurus:wake

• rousing
• rousingly
• roust

[Late 16th Century] From carouse, from rebracketing of the phrase “drink carouse” as “drink a rouse”.

rouse (plural rouses)

1. An official ceremony over drinks.
   • c. 1600, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene 2,

     No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day

     But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,

     And the King’s rouse the heaven shall bruit again,

     Respeaking earthly thunder.

2. A carousal; a festival; a drinking frolic.
   • 1842, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Vision of Sin” in Poems, London: Edward Moxon, Volume 2, p. 219,

     Fill the cup, and fill the can:

     Have a rouse before the morn:

     Every minute dies a man,

     Every minute one is born.

3. Wine or other liquor considered an inducement to mirth or drunkenness; a full glass; a bumper.

• Brachet, An etymological dictionary of the French language

• Euros, Suero, euros, roués, suero