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cruise

nounverbnouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//kɹuːz//
  • United Kingdom//kɹʉwz//
  • United States//kɹuz//
  • Australia//kɹʉːz//
  • Scotland//kɾʉz//

A sea or lake voyage, especially one taken for pleasure.

noun

  1. 1

    A sea or lake voyage, especially one taken for pleasure.

    Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.

    He departed with the Naniwa and the Hashidate²⁰ for a two day cruise, skirting the Wuchiu and Hui Ch’uan Islands and the shore of Fukien Province.

  2. 2

    Portion of aircraft travel at a constant airspeed and altitude between ascent and descent phases.

  3. 3

    informalA period spent in the Marine Corps.

    I ended my cruise of four years in the Marine Corps at the first Officers' Training Camp for enlisted men at Quantico […]

    The New Orleans had to have numerous alterations made, and as the Chicago was just about going into commission, I was ordered to that ship to finish my cruise.

  4. 4

    A car enthusiasts' event where they drive their vehicles in a group.

    Near-synonym: car show

  5. 5

    slangA period of reducing the dosage of PEDs instead of cycling them off as opposed to a full-dosed cycle (blast).

Etymology

Borrowed from Dutch kruisen (“cross, sail around”), from kruis (“cross”), from Middle Dutch cruce, from Latin crux.

verb

  1. 1

    To sail about, especially for pleasure.

    He and Gerald usually challenged the rollers in a sponson canoe when Gerald was there for the weekend; or, when Lansing came down, the two took long swims seaward or cruised about in Gerald's dory, clad in their swimming-suits; and Selwyn's youth became renewed in a manner almost ridiculous,[…].

  2. 2

    To travel at constant speed for maximum operating efficiency.

  3. 3

    To move about an area leisurely in the hope of discovering something, or looking for custom.

  4. 4

    To inspect (forest land) for the purpose of estimating the quantity of lumber it will yield.

  5. 5

    To actively seek a romantic partner or casual sexual partner by moving about a particular area; to troll.

  6. 6

    To attempt to pick up as a casual sexual partner; hit on

    1970-1975, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure Lot of not too bad looking boys there but when M came in I knew right then: him. Very thin & feminine, brown hair fluffed around his sharp featured face. So I began cruising him.

    I saw you cruise that white guy over there. The one with the wavy hair (yeah). I cruised him too, but I couldn't get through.

    We see him [Joseph Huff-Hannon] approach several sets of men to ak if they have "a minute to talk about climate change"; they dismiss him out of hand, clearly more interesting in playing volleyball and cruising—including cruising Huff-Hannon himself—than in listening to bad news.

  7. 7

    To walk while holding on to an object (stage in development of ambulation, typically occurring at 10 months).

  8. 8

    To win easily and convincingly.

    Germany cruised to a World Cup victory over the short-handed Australians.

  9. 9

    To take part in a cruise (car enthusiasts' event where they drive their vehicles in a group).

  10. 10

    slangTo have a period of reducing the dosage of PEDs instead of cycling them off as opposed to going through a full-dosed cycle (blast).

    blast and cruise

noun

  1. 1

    A small cup; cruse.

    And she said, As the Lord thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die.

Forms

plural
cruises
past tense
cruised
past participle
cruised
present participle
cruising
third person singular
cruises
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).