gauze

plural gauzes · alternative obsolete gause

1. countableuncountableA thin fabric with a loose, open weave.
2. countableuncountablemedicineA similar bleached cotton fabric used as a surgical dressing.

   “I can’t wrap up any dog’s foot now. There’s some gauze in the bathroom, go get it and do it yourself.”

   1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC

3. countableuncountableA thin woven metal or plastic mesh.
4. abbreviationcountableellipsisuncountableEllipsis of wire gauze
5. countableuncountableMist or haze

present singular third person gauzes · participle present gauzing · participle past gauzed · past gauzed · alternative obsolete gause

1. transitiveTo apply a dressing of gauze; to cover with gauze.

   I gauzed the deep cuts and gashes.

   2007, Brandon Pena, Twilight’s Angel, page 161

   1 more example

   The lid [of the feeder] has a circular gauzed area that allows the syrup to permeate slowly.

   2004, Peter Gordon, Starting with Bees, page 52

2. ambitransitiveliteraryTo mist; to make or become gauze-like.

   It had come to be six o’clock; midges gauzed the air.

   1955, Elizabeth Bowen, A World of Love, page 40

   3 more examples

   The wide plain gauzed into a sea on which the hut floated lonely.

   1902, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Bush Studies (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 28

   Then a film of chemical vapour seems to drift around the city, fudging every edge, gauzing every vista.

   1985, Jan Morris, From the Four Corners, published 1995

   I was once foolish enough to believe knowledge would clarify, but some things are so gauzed behind layers of syntax and semantics, behind days and hours, names forgotten, salvaged and shed, that simply knowing the wound exists does nothing to reveal it.

   2019, Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous