Mosey
Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2019 6:55 pm
• mosey •
Pronunciation: mo-zee • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb, intransitive
Meaning: Saunter, stroll, wander, walk or otherwise move at a leisurely pace.
Notes: This word is colloquial, bordering on slang. This shouldn't prevent its having derivational relatives, but it has none. It itself shamelessly pretends to be a derivational count noun, as 'to take a mosey over somewhere', but that is it for lexical family.
In Play: Today's Good Word usually refers to walking: "While Monika's out, I'll have time to mosey on over to the liquor store." It is often used tongue in cheek: "If you're not going to smoke me, why don't you just mosey away."
Word History: We don't know where this word comes from, but that hasn't hindered the speculation. One speculation is that it is related to the adjective muzzy "drowsy, spiritless, confused". This word seems to imply slowness, but it is an adjective, perhaps derived from muzz "befuddled, confused". Another guess is that it arose from mosy, a dialectal word meaning "bewildered, confused; stupid, foolish". This adjective doesn't seem related to any verb. Someone speculated that it is an abbreviation of vamoose, but this word hardly implies slowness. The problem with all these theories is that the origins of the origins (excepting only the last) are unknown. (We're happy that Philip Hudson moseyed over to his computer and shared today's mysterious Good Word with all of us.)