Goose

Goose, gōōs, n. (pl. Geese) a web-footed animal like a duck, but larger and stronger: a tailor's smoothing-iron, from the likeness of the handle to the neck of a goose: a stupid, silly person: a game of chance once common in England, in which the players moved counters forward from one compartment on a board to another, the right to a double move being secured when the card bearing the picture of a goose was reached.—v.t. (slang) to hiss off the stage.—ns. Goose′-cap, a silly person; Goose′-corn, a coarse rush; Goose′-egg, a zero, denoting a miss or failure to score at an athletic or other contest; Goose′-fish, a common name in America for the angler-fish (see Angler); Goose′-flesh, a puckered condition of the skin, like that of a plucked goose, through cold, fear, &c.; Goose′-foot, pigweed; Goose′-grass, a species of Bedstraw (q.v.), a common weed in hedges and bushy places in Britain, Europe, and America; Goose′-neck, an iron swivel forming the fastening between a boom and a mast: a bent pipe or tube with a swivel-joint; Goose′-quill, one of the quills or large wing-feathers of a goose, used as pens; Goos′ery, a place for keeping geese: stupidity; Goose′-skin, a kind of thin soft leather; Goose′-step (mil.), the marking of time by raising the feet alternately without making progress; Goose′-wing, one of the clews or lower corners of a ship's mainsail or foresail when the middle part is furled or tied up to the yard.—adj. Goose′-winged, having only one clew set: in fore-and-aft rigged vessels, having the mainsail on one side and the foresail on the other, so as to sail wing-and-wing.—n. Goos′ey, a goose: a blockhead. [A.S. gós; Ice. gás, Ger. gans, L. anser, Gr. chēn, Sans. hamsa.]