rouse
An act of causing something to be active or to moveAn act of causing something to be (more) active or to move; a shakeup, a stir; also (chiefly US), a commotion, a disturbance.
» The concert was a rousing success.
CK · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
5 sensesAn act of causing something to be (more) active or to move; a shakeup, a stir; also (chiefly US), a commotion, a disturbance.
Chiefly of a hawk: an act of shaking the feathers.
(Canada, UK)Often in the form Rouse and preceded by the: the sounding of a call, usually on the bugle in the morning after reveille, to signal that soldiers are to rise from bed; also, the reveille.
(archaic)A full or large cup or glass of an alcoholic beverage, especially when drunk as a toast; a bumper.
to give a rouse to take one’s rouse
(archaic)A social gathering at which alcoholic beverages are drunk; a drinking bout or party; a carousal.
Examples
16 sentencesThe concert was a rousing success.
The sound roused her from sleep.
He is a lion when roused.
The cry roused me from my sleep.
The slogan was designed to rouse the people.
Origin
The verb is derived from Late Middle English rousen (“of a hawk: to shake its feathers”);The verb is derived from Late Middle English rousen (“of a hawk: to shake its feathers”); further etymology unknown. Because many terms of French origin are used in falconry, it has been assumed that the Middle English word is derived from Anglo-Norman or French; however, no satisfactory etymon has been found. The following words have been suggested, but are thought by the Oxford English Dictionary to be unlikely due to the differences in meaning:
Probably from carouse (“(obsolete) of drinking a cup of an alcoholic beverage: to the bottom”, adverb), from a rebracketing of the phrase drink carouse as drink a rouse. Carouse is derived from German gar aus (“all out”), as in gar-aus trinken (“to drink all out; to drink to the bottom”).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.