moose
/muːs/noun
moose is spelled M-O-O-S-E: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears 4.1 times per million words in written English, the 12,764th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, moose means “The largest member of the deer family (Alces americanus, sometimes included in Alces alces), of which the male has very large, palmate antlers” (English Wiktionary, September 2026).
How many letters and syllables are in moose?
| Letters | 5: M-O-O-S-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 4.1 times per million words; the 12,764th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How common is moose?
Moose appears 4.1 times per million words in written English, the 12,764th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce moose?
- /muːs/
- /mʉs/
Moose has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-moose.ogg, En-au-moose.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with moose
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: mousse (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What does moose mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The largest member of the deer family (Alces americanus, sometimes included in Alces alces), of which the male has very large, palmate antlers.
We saw a moose at the edge of the woods.
- 2
Any of the extinct moose-like deer of the genera Cervalces and Libralces.
- 3
colloquialderogatoryAn ugly person.
- 4
USslangAn Asian girl taken as a lover.
noun
- 1
derogatoryslangA Muslim.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Moose in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense largest member of the deer family (Alces alces):
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does moose come from?
Earlier mus, moos, from an Eastern Algonquian language name for the animal, such as Massachusett moos, mws, Narragansett moos or Penobscot mos (cognate to Abenaki moz), from Proto-Algonquian *mo·swa (“it strips”), referring to how a moose strips tree bark when feeding: compare Massachusett moos-u (“he strips, cuts smooth”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).