Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various chilled desserts made with flavored whipped cream, gelatin, and eggs.
  • noun A molded dish containing meat, fish, or shellfish combined with whipped cream and gelatin.
  • noun An aerosol foam used to control and style the hair.
  • transitive verb To apply a styling foam to (the hair).

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In cookery, a whipped cream, sweetened and variously flavored, with or without eggs, and frozen without stirring.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Cookery) A frozen dessert of a frothy texture, made of sweetened and flavored whipped cream, sometimes with the addition of egg yolks and gelatin. Mousse differs from ice cream in being beaten before -- not during -- the freezing process.
  • noun Any of a variety of foods whipped to a light texture.
  • noun A foam containing special chemicals, used for styling hair.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An airy pudding served chilled, particularly chocolate mousse.
  • noun A savory dish, of meat or seafood, containing gelatin.
  • noun A styling cream used for hair.
  • verb To apply mousse (styling cream).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a rich, frothy, creamy dessert made with whipped egg whites and heavy cream
  • noun toiletry consisting of an aerosol foam used in hair styling
  • verb apply a styling gel to
  • noun a light creamy dish made from fish or meat and set with gelatin

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, foam, mousse, from Old French, moss, foam, partly of Germanic origin and partly from Latin mulsa, hydromel, from feminine of mulsus, honey-sweet; see melit- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French mousse ("foam, froth"), from Old French mosse ("moss"), from Frankish or Old Dutch mosa ("moss"), from Proto-Germanic *musan (“moss, bog, marsh”). More at moss.

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