moss

• (UK) IPA^(key): /mɒs/
• (US) enPR: môs, IPA^(key): /mɔs/
• (cot–caught merger) enPR: mäs, IPA^(key): /mɑs/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒs
• Rhymes: -ɔːs

From Middle English mos, from Old English mos (“bog, marsh, moss”), from Proto-West Germanic *mos (“marsh, moss”), from Proto-Germanic *musą (“marsh, moss”), from Proto-Indo-European *mews- (“moss”).

Cognate with Saterland Frisian Moas (“moss”), West Frisian moas (“moss”), Dutch mos (“moss”), German Low German Moss (“moss”), German Moos (which shows the same polysemy of "moss" and "bog, fen"), Danish mos (“moss”), Swedish mossa (“moss”), Icelandic mosi (“moss”), Latin muscus (“moss”), Russian мох (mox, “moss”),^[1] Polish mech. Doublet of mousse.

moss (countable and uncountable, plural mosses)

1. Any of various small, green, seedless plants growing on the ground or on the surfaces of trees, stones, etc.; now specifically, a plant of the phylum Bryophyta (formerly division Musci).

   Hypernym: bryophyte

2. (countable) A kind or species of such plants.
3. (informal) Any alga, lichen, bryophyte, or other plant of seemingly simple structure.

   Hyponyms: alga, cryptogam, lichen

   Spanish moss

   Irish moss

   club moss

4. (now chiefly UK regional) A bog; a fen.

   the mosses of the Scottish border

   Loynton Moss

• The plural form mosses is used when more than one kind of moss (plant) is meant, or more than one bog. The singular moss is used referring to a collection of moss plants of the same kind.

moss (third-person singular simple present mosses, present participle mossing, simple past and past participle mossed)

1. (intransitive) To become covered with moss.

   An oak whose boughs were mossed with age.

2. (transitive) To cover (something) with moss.

• muscoid

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

moss (third-person singular simple present mosses, present participle mossing, simple past and past participle mossed)

1. (intransitive, MTE, slang) To relax, chill out.^[2]
   • 2014 August 29, @7oneZ_FuckTDSB, Twitter‎^[1]:

     Although I really shouldn't... I feel like cracking this stout and just mossing in the sun with a splif. Shit, maan. Its^[sic] relaxation time!

• A New English dictionary on historical principles, Volume 6, Sir James Augustus Henry Murray, Sir William Alexander Craigie, Charles Talbut Onions, editors, Clarendon Press, 1908, pages 684-6

• SMOS, SMOs, soms

• mossál

mos +‎ -j

• IPA^(key): [ˈmoʃː]

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: moss
• Rhymes: -oʃː

moss

1. second-person singular subjunctive present indefinite of mos

   Moss fogat! ― Brush your teeth! (literally, “Wash tooth!”)

Not to be confused with mos (“to wash”).