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wowser

/ˈwaʊzə(ɹ)/noun, interjection

wowser is a derogatory noun meaning “One with strong moral views against alcohol, gambling, pornography, etc., who seeks to promulgate those views; a censorious, self-righteous…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled W-O-W-S-E-R, and it appears about once in every 29 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of wowser is wowsers.

What does wowser mean?

noun

  1. 1

    AustraliaderogatoryOne with strong moral views against alcohol, gambling, pornography, etc., who seeks to promulgate those views; a censorious, self-righteous, puritanical person who tries to stop others from having fun.

  2. 2

    Alternative form of wowzer.

interjection

  1. 1

    Alternative form of wowsers.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce wowser?

  • /ˈwaʊzə(ɹ)/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-au-wowser.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of wowser

  • wowsers plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is wowser?

Wowser appears about once in every 29 million words in written English, the 163,711th 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).

Where does wowser come from?

From UK dialect. Australian from late 1890s. John Norton, an early enemy of wowsers, claimed it to be an acronym for "We Only Want Social Evils Remedied", but that is likely a folk etymology. A story has it that gospellers in the streets of Clunes, Victoria in the 1870s were called rousers but one of the town councillors had a speech impediment and couldn't pronounce his "R"s, thus giving wowser. (Reference: Bill Wannan, Australian Folklore, Lansdowne Press, 1970, reprint 1979 →ISBN, under "Wowser", page 568.)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).