Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A thin, transparent fabric with a loose open weave, used for curtains and clothing.
- n. A thin, loosely woven surgical dressing, usually made of cotton.
- n. A thin plastic or metal woven mesh.
- n. A mist or haze.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A very thin, slight, transparent stuff made of silk, silk and cotton, or silk and hemp or linen. It is either plain or brocaded with patterns in silk, or, in the case of gauzes from the east of Asia, with flowers in gold or silver. Compare
gossamer . - n. Any slight open material resembling this fabric: as, wire gauze.
- Of or like gauze; gauzy.
- n. In surgery, cheese-cloth, impregnated with antiseptic material (such as borie acid, corrosive sublimate, or iodoform), or simply sterilized, employed in dressing wounds.
Wiktionary
- n. A thin fabric with a loose, open weave.
- n. A similar bleached cotton fabric used as a surgical dressing.
- n. A thin woven metal or plastic mesh.
- n. Wire gauze, used as fence.
- n. Mist or haze
- v. To apply a dressing of gauze
- v. To mist
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A very thin, slight, transparent stuff, generally of silk; also, any fabric resembling silk gauze
- adj. Having the qualities of gauze; thin; light.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a net of transparent fabric with a loose open weave
- n. (medicine) bleached cotton cloth of plain weave used for bandages and dressings
Etymologies
- From French gaze, either from Arabic قَزّ (qazz, "silk"), from Persian کز (kaz, "silk"), from Middle Persian kaz ("silk"); or from غَزّة (ġazza, "Gaza"), a city associated with silk production. (Wiktionary)
- French gaze, possibly from Spanish gasa (from Arabic qazz, raw silk, possibly from Persian kazh). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Well, they packed stuff in it, just like what I call gauze tape, you know, that we sew.”
“Among the exceptions is an elegant dark wooden chest of drawers from Hitler's chancellery, filigreed with hundreds of swastika forms, which has been hung at a diagonal angle on a corner wall, and is further protected from possible Hitler admirers by a thin gauze panel.”
The Guardian: Germany's first Hitler exhibition opens in nervous Berlin museum
“Then maybe wrap these big scrapes in gauze and tape.”
“Quikclot is now available in gauze pad form and is much easier and cleaner to use than the older, granular product.”
“Around the broom, imitating tinsel, is wrapped the gauze from a bandage.”
“We found many of the natives dressed in a thin French gauze, which they called byqui; this being a light airy dress, and well calculated to display the shape of their persons, is much esteemed by the ladies.”
“As there was nothing under the thin gauze, the result of course was more display than is usual in Europe.”
“We found many of the natives dressed in a thin French gauze, which they call _Byqui_; this being a light airy dress, and well calculated to display the shape of their persons, is much esteemed by the ladies.”
“A thin gauze was procured from their webs, and this Cean manufacture, the invention of a woman, for female use, was long admired both in the East and at”
“Smothered up in gauze, the sky’s been healing for a week or two, conserving its basin of gruel.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘gauze’.
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SCIE - EU nomenclature
All the scientific words found in the official EU nomenclature. For the screening I used Vocabgrabber of the Visual Thesaurus.
abdominal, absorbent, accelerator, accumulator, acebutolol, acetamide, acetanilide, acetate, acetic acid, acetone, acetous, acetyl and 1171 more...
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Of Arabic Origin
Arabic loanwords in English are words acquired directly from Arabic or else indirectly by passing from Arabic into other languages and then into English. Most entered one or more of the Romance lan...
admiral, adobe, albatross, alchemy, alcohol, alcove, alembic, alfalfa, algebra, algorism, algorithm, alidade and 181 more...
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IMCO - EU nomenclature
includes words of the "Prodcom list"
abaca, abdominal, abrasive, absorbent, absorber, accelerator, accessory, account book, accumulator, acebutolol, acetaldehyde, acetamide and 4515 more...
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EN - pronunciation fun
All words of the poem
The Chaos
by Gerard Nolst Trenité
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse <...abyss, ache, actual, advice, aerie, age, ague, aisles, alas, alien, alive, allowed and 406 more...
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Genes
Interesting gene names. Some of these may have changed recently (to something less offensive/funny).
http://www.genenames.org/
tinman, agnostic, dreadlocks, Van Gogh, fruitless, lava lamp, ariadne, cheap date, ken and barbie, I'm not dead yet, I'm not dead yet 2, manic fringe and 1192 more... -
Tip-Top Toponymic
Place names that have entered general speech. Toponyms that interest me in other ways are on Place Names Of Distinction
hamburger, wiener, finlandisation, vernissage, hackney, venetians, bohemian, anti-macassar, berliner, cravat, calico, serendipity and 113 more...
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and ...
Words that, as I see it, have some fond connection to the Alice stories through their creation or particular use by Lewis Carroll. I mean to tie them all together with contexty comments!
alice, daisy-chain, white rabbit, waistcoat-pocket, rabbit-hole, marmalade, antipathy, antipode, curtsey, dinah, tea-time, rat-hole and 232 more...
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Words I like
This is a list of my favourite words (phrases) in english, as a second language. I love them mostly because of how they sound and their meaning.
ninja, cookie, skill, zip, plentiful, digg, debris, pancake, cucumber, fetch, pot, backpack and 461 more...
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words found to be generally pleasing
alabaster, mahogany, camphor, coalesce, spire, portmanteau, gadabout, palaver, dolor, dour, dun, luminesce and 610 more...
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I know that word...but, somehow, it d...
A combination of jamais vu and logomnesia (?) for common, unremarkable words. This happened to me today with the word bungalow ("Is that the right spelling? Maybe -lou? No, that's not right....")....
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Kavitha's Words
avarice, mellow, mahogany, serendipity, plush, vengeance, catalyst, plausible, penury, meticulous, sarcastic, ninja and 100 more...
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Jacqueline's Words
glittery, horny, amazing, wanderlust, forlorn, lustily, nonchalant, cool, passive, submissive, roundabout, carousel and 558 more...
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norrell's Words
hush, dove, euphoria, nebulae, bryn mawr, darling, phoenix, nape, cream, butterscotch, cosmos, frost and 190 more...
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ifjuly's list
favorite words. some are made up injokes between me and my husband or family.
skein, zaftig, july, bed, orifice, aesthete, ink, parce-que, desormais, cake, pusillanimous, pulse and 531 more...
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Words That Populate My Mind
This is a collection of words I love, old ones that I love the sound of when I repeat them for years and new ones coined in news articles on up and coming trends and technologies - most of them I k...
aroma, mojo, blithely, fringe, fray, synchronicity, doublespeak, buzzword, thoughtcrime, portmanteau, newspeak, oldspeak and 963 more...
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frequent toefl
Words that I do not know or unsure for toefl
appurtenances, aptitude, arbitrary, arboretum, argot, arrears, avocation, avuncular, badger, bait, warden, bane and 428 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for gauze.

bilby I'd say the flat ā for -au- (as in the conventional pronunciation of gauge) is pretty uncommon. I'm not sure whether standard pronunciation as in 'my chillisauce is fraught of beans' quite reaches 99% but it's high. Perhaps we can comfort the remainder with some gauze. Oct 16, 2010
Prolagus Dear marsupial, there's a rule for that: for over 99% of verbs, active transitive goes with "avere" and passive and intransitive with "essere". Oct 16, 2010
bilby It's time to choose, Italian speakers: essere or avere. You've had a thousand years to pick a serviceable auxiliary verb. Oct 16, 2010
Prolagus It's time to choose, English speakers: take gauze and gauge and decide - either "gôz" and "gôjˈ" or "gāz" and "gājˈ". Oct 15, 2010
oroboros See, we've all had that Wordnik moment of "that word doesn't look right". From Phil Plait ("Bad Astronomer" on twitter): "Had to type the word "gauze" for a post going up tomorrow. The word looks wrong no matter how I spell it. Gauze. Gawz. Gouze. Snooki." Oct 15, 2010