Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To tear or pull apart; rend.
  • To tease; comb.
  • To harass; worry; plague.
  • To pull about; handle roughly or carelessly; hence, to rumple; dishevel; tousle.
  • To bustle; exert one's self vigorously; struggle.
  • noun A pull; a haul; a seizure; a disturbance.

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

  • noun Prov. Eng. A pulling; a disturbance.
  • verb Prov. Eng. To pull; to haul; to tear; to worry.

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

  • verb transitive to pull to pieces
  • noun a noisy disturbance

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word touse.

Examples

  • Among those American writers who were originally identified as "minimalists," a group that would include Raymond Carver, Bobbie Ann Mason, Ann Beattie, and Tobias Wolff, Mary Robisonmay have been the most minimalist of them all -- or, touse the word she hassaid she prefers to describethenarrative/expository strategy employed by these writers, the most radically "subtractionist."

    Dashed to the Ground 2009

  • David V.: Which brings it back to comparing against other Federal programs like SSI and Medicare – compelled to pay in to but not compelled touse.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Health insurance mandate as a privacy right violation 2010

  • You can also fundraise with our easy-touse Wear Red Day fundraising tool.

    It's National Wear Red Day! Wear Red For Women's Heart Health The Huffington Post 2011

  • Among those American writers who were originally identified as "minimalists," a group that would include Raymond Carver, Bobbie Ann Mason, Ann Beattie, and Tobias Wolff, Mary Robisonmay have been the most minimalist of them all -- or, touse the word she hassaid she prefers to describethenarrative/expository strategy employed by these writers, the most radically "subtractionist."

    Narrative Strategies 2009

  • Drones are only inexpensive or simple in comparison to the manned aircraft we would otherwise have touse.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Drone Warfare in House Subcommittee Hearing 2010

  • You can also fundraise with our easy-touse Wear Red Day fundraising tool.

    It's National Wear Red Day! Wear Red For Women's Heart Health The Huffington Post 2011

  • High-tech companies are concerned about a provision in the annual defense-spending bill that makes it harder touse foreign subcontractors.

    What's News: Business 2010

  • That urgent query could be the search for a message within a short passage or a story, something to motivate the reader touse that message to better his day or week; an emotional catharsis which will lift his mood for days to come.

    How to Write Engaging Work in a Land of Rules 2010

  • Patrick, are you aware that there is something called the remote control? invest in a new television, and remember touse the off button.

    Whitney Houston wardrobe malfunction: Yikes, she really didn't need that... | EW.com 2009

  • Among those American writers who were originally identified as "minimalists," a group that would include Raymond Carver, Bobbie Ann Mason, Ann Beattie, and Tobias Wolff, Mary Robisonmay have been the most minimalist of them all -- or, touse the word she hassaid she prefers to describethenarrative/expository strategy employed by these writers, the most radically "subtractionist."

    November 2009 2009

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  • While in cavalcade, with band and blade,

    Came Marshals, Princes, Kings;

    And the town was theirs…. Ay, as simple maid,

    My mother saw these things!

    And whenever those notes in the street begin,

    I recall her, and that far scene,

    And her acting of how the Allies marched in,

    And her touse of the tambourine!

    - Thomas Hardy, 'Leipzig'.

    September 18, 2009