ooze

/uz/

/uz/

Other forms: oozing; oozed; oozes

The beauty of the word ooze is not only that it's both a noun and a verb but also that the word sounds like what it means. The ooze on the bottom of the pond oozed between your toes.

When something oozes, it seeps out slowly in an unappetizing way. Cheese sauce oozes out of the container. Sludge oozes out of a treatment plant. Cream oozes out of a tube. Whatever is oozing is referred to as ooze. After an oil spill, a cleanup crew has to clean up the ooze that collects on the shore. It can also be used to describe someone's behavior if it's especially awful. A person who is really bad, for example, can be said to ooze evil.

Definitions of ooze

1. verb

   pass gradually or leak through or as if through small openings
   synonyms: seep

   type of:

   course, feed, flow, run

   move along, of liquids
2. verb

   release (a liquid) in drops or small quantities
   synonyms: exudate, exude, ooze out, transude

   types:

   distil, distill

   give off (a liquid)

   fume, reek

   be wet with sweat or blood, as of one's face

   transpire

   give off (water) through the skin

   extravasate

   geology: cause molten material, such as lava, to pour forth

   stream

   exude profusely

   gum

   exude or form gum

   release, secrete

   generate and separate from cells or bodily fluids

   froth

   exude or expel foam

   water

   secrete or form water, as tears or saliva

   lather

   exude sweat or lather

   type of:

   egest, eliminate, excrete, pass

   eliminate from the body
3. noun

   any thick, viscous matter
   synonyms: goo, gook, goop, guck, gunk, muck, slime, sludge

   types:

   sapropel

   sludge (rich in organic matter) that accumulates at the bottom of lakes or oceans

   type of:

   matter

   that which has mass and occupies space
4. noun

   the slow escape of liquid or gas through small holes
   synonyms: oozing, seepage

   types:

   exudation, transudation

   the process of exuding; the slow escape of liquids from blood vessels through pores or breaks in the cell membranes

   type of:

   flow, flowing

   the motion characteristic of fluids (liquids or gases)