To sleep lightly or briefly; to take a short nap, or to temporarily silence an alarm clock.
Origin uncertain, but likely from a blend of 'snore' + 'doze,' first appearing in American English around the 1780s. Some linguists suggest it might be related to obsolete 'snuzz' (to sleep soundly) or Dutch 'snoezen' (to doze). The word was originally informal slang that gradually became standard. Interestingly, the 'snooze button' wasn't invented until 1956 by General Electric-Telechron, giving new life to this old word for napping.
This cozy word might be a mashup of 'snore' and 'doze' that American English invented! What's amazing is that we had the word 'snooze' for almost 200 years before anyone invented the snooze button in 1956. Generations of people knew how to snooze, but it took until the Eisenhower era for someone to figure out how to snooze an alarm clock. Talk about delayed innovation!
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