hose
Americannoun
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hose,
plural
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hoses,
plural
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hosen
plural (Archaic)
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a flexible tube for conveying a liquid, as water, to a desired point.
a garden hose; a fire hose.
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(used with a plural verb) an article of clothing for the foot and lower part of the leg; stocking or sock.
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(of men's attire in former times)
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an article of clothing for the leg, extending from about the knee to the ankle and worn with knee breeches.
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(used with a plural verb) knee breeches.
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(used with a plural verb) tights, as were worn with, and usually attached to, a doublet.
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British Dialect. a sheath, or sheathing part, as that enclosing a kernel of grain.
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Golf. hosel.
verb (used with object)
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hoses,
present (3rd person singular)
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hosed,
past participle, past
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hosing
present participle
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to water, wash, spray, or drench by means of a hose (often followed bydown ).
to hose the garden; to hose down the ship's deck.
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Slang.
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to cheat, trick, or take advantage of.
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to defeat decisively.
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to reject.
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Chiefly Military. to attack or assault (an area) in order to gain control quickly (sometimes followed bydown ).
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noun
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stockings, socks, and tights collectively
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history a man's garment covering the legs and reaching up to the waist; worn with a doublet
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socks
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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hosesimple
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hosessimple
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have hosedperfect
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has hosedperfect
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am hosingprogressive
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are hosingprogressive
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is hosingprogressive
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have been hosingperfect progressive
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has been hosingperfect progressive
Past
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hosedsimple
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had hosedperfect
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was hosingprogressive
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were hosingprogressive
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had been hosingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hose
before 1100; (noun) Middle English, Old English; cognate with Dutch hoos, Old Norse hosa, German Hose; (v.) Middle English: to provide with hose, derivative of the noun
Explanation
A hose is a long plastic or rubber tube that's used for moving a liquid from one place to another. You may use a hose to water your lawn, or to get gas from the pump into your car's tank. Don't use a hose to ingest liquids; use a glass instead. A garden hose is useful for watering plants or washing your car, while firefighters use hoses to spray water on fires. A hose is similar to a pipe, being long, narrow, and hollow, with space for liquid to move through it, although a hose is flexible, and a pipe is commonly made of stiff metal or hard plastic. You can use the word as a verb, meaning "to spray with a hose," or as a noun meaning "sheer stockings."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
My muscles burned and my back screamed as I raced up and down the stairs, dragging the hose around door frames.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 2026
According to company lore, a retired Swiss triathlete and Ironman champion named Olivier Bernhard couldn’t find a running shoe that met his needs, so he made one himself with a garden hose, scissors and glue.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 3, 2026
When officers finally acted, they pulled only half the hose out, leaving the rest coiled inside the cabinet, and stood there baffled as to why the water wouldn’t flow.
From Slate ● Aug. 11, 2026
That shift can train a veritable fire hose of tropical moisture at Southern California, potentially leading to significant rainfall across the region — albeit at the cost of drier-than-usual conditions elsewhere.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2026
The only person I could see around was our older neighbor across the street, who was watering the hydrangea bushes lining his front yard with a hose.
From "From the Desk of Zoe Washington" by Janae Marks
Born in Nieder-Rehback, Austria-Hungary, 69 years ago, Victor Berger attended the Universities of Vienna and Budapest, arrived in the U. S. in 1878 with $75 in his hosen.
From Time Magazine Archive
He opened a large chest and found underlinen and hosen, a hood with a long peak, and a warm cloak.
From "The Door in the Wall" by Marguerite de Angeli
He pulled off Robin’s hosen and carried him into the water, holding and dipping him where the current ran deep.
From "The Door in the Wall" by Marguerite de Angeli
With my hosen I had to give up my purse full of money, which I had hid there three hours before, and thus had preserved from the first pilferers.
From Pictures of German Life in the XVth XVIth and XVIIth Centuries, Vol. II. by Gustav Freytag
Put on your warm hosen, And shuffle a bit; Your toes may be frozen Before you know it.
From The Comforts of Home by Ralph Bergengren
"We're still short of hoses, which makes it hard for us to extinguish this fire."
From Barron's ● Sep. 8, 2026
Dart draped ice towels around her neck and used cold-air hoses at the changeovers against Bouzkova as she attempted to cool down.
From BBC ● Sep. 3, 2026
As they were driving away when evacuating, they could see on their app that there were firemen with hoses walking around.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 10, 2026
"It can help us with detection but it's not technology that puts out fires; you need people to pull the hoses through the forest to attack them."
From BBC ● Aug. 4, 2026
No neighbors to rush over with buckets and hoses.
From "I Survived the Great Alaska Earthquake, 1964" by Lauren Tarshis
As the country raged that the Broncos got hosed, the man in charge of the team took the high road.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
If people get hosed by, say, a bear market in stocks, taxpayers will end up on the hook supporting them anyway.
From MarketWatch ● May 13, 2026
And by 7 a.m., it’s all over: the seafood is gone, the floors are hosed down, and a full day’s business has come and gone before you’ve even had your morning coffee.
From Salon ● Aug. 7, 2025
City are never home and hosed this season.
From BBC ● Feb. 11, 2025
She’d apparently gotten over being hosed down, because she was laughing and belching right alongside her friends.
From "The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan
"I don't know what possessed me," the drummer grimaces, while trying to insist the hosing "was an act of kindness and love because it was a hot day".
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026
Firefighters quickly began hosing down the smoking reactor -- "they didn't let the fire spread," Solovyov said.
From Barron's ● Apr. 25, 2026
Some have hired professional remediation firms while others are throwing out damaged toys and furniture, scrubbing walls and hosing down playground equipment themselves in the hopes of being able to welcome children back.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 25, 2025
Over time, they made progress, hosing off embers and spot fires.
From BBC ● Jan. 12, 2025
Marco Rossi was in the third ring, hosing down an elephant and scrubbing her wrinkled gray skin with a long-handled deck brush.
From "Storm Runners" by Roland Smith
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
