Also 6 fysel(l, 7 fisle. [f. FISE: see -LE. Cf. also FIZZ and FISSLE.]
† 1. intr. To break wind without noise. Obs.
c. 1532. Dewes, Introd. Fr., in Palsgr., 957, Uener to fysel.
1601. Holland, Pliny, II. 286. As for Onopordon, they say if Asses eat thereof, they will fall a fizling and farting.
1711. E. Ward, Quix., I. 415.
| So rowsing with a wakeful Brain, | |
| Like a fierce Lyon from his Den, | |
| He gap’d and fizzl’d twice or thrice, | |
| And then was ready in a trice. |
1739. R. Bull, trans. Dedekindus’ Grobianus, 268.
| Proceed, ye venerable Train! proceed, | |
| To fart and fizzle in the Time of Need. |
b. quasi-trans. (with cognate obj.)
1721. D’Urfey, Two Queens Brentford, Epil. I fizzle such small puffs of Wind.
2. intr. To make a hissing sound; to hiss or sputter (as a wet combustible, or a fire-work).
1859. All Year Round, No. 36, 31 Dec., 222/1. Beneath the umbrella of the kibab stall there is instantly a sound as of feasting and merriment. The black oil fizzles.
1881. Daily News, 7 Nov., 5/1. Unambitious rockets which fizzle doggedly downwards.
3. fig. a. intr. (chiefly U.S. colloq.) To fail, make a fiasco, come to a lame conclusion; in U.S. college slang, to fail in a recitation or examination. Also, to fizzle out. b. trans. U.S. college slang. To cause (a person) to fail in examination, or the like.
1847. Yale Banger, 22 Oct., in Hall, Coll. Words & Cust. (1851), 130. My dignity is outraged at beholding those who fizzle and flunk in my presence tower above me.
1848. Yale Lit. Mag., XIII. June, 321, ‘The Song of Sighs.’
| FIZZLE him tenderly, | |
| Bore him with care, | |
| Fitted so slenderly— | |
| Tutor, beware! |
1878. Cumberld. Gloss., Fizzle, to work busily but ineffectively.
1884. Melbourne Punch, 4 Sept., 98/2. Another of Mr. Miramms’ pet fads has fizzled ignominiously out.
1893. The Saturday Review, LXXVI. 11 Nov., 538/2. The Chicago Exhibition has quietly come to an end, the tragic death of the Mayor of the city forming one sufficient reason for dispensing with closing ceremonies. Another may have been a general recognition by the Chicagoans that their show had to some extent fizzled.
Hence Fizzling vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1616. B. Jonson, Devil an Ass, V. iii.
| Meer. It is the easiest thing, sir, to be done, | |
| As plain as fizzling: roll but with your eyes, | |
| And foam at the mouth. |
1638. Brome, Antipodes, III. iv.
| Buff. Fah on your passages, | |
| Your windy workings, and your fislings at | |
| The barre. |
1758. Gray, Lett., Wks. 1884, II. 368. That old fizzling Duke is coming here again (but I hope to be gone first) to hear speeches in his new library.
1815. trans. Paris Chit-Chat (1816), II. 92. The oaths of this fury assailed our ears in conjunction with the fizzling of the bacon she was frying, from which issued a smell, that seized with as much violence on the throat, as the smoke of her green wood exercised on the eyes.
1893. A. Walters, Lotos Eater in Capri, vii. 157. What if one or two of the more complicated set pieces in the pyrotechnic display refused their revolutionary office when called upon, and, with a traitorous disinclination to be made light of in accordance with the sanguine intentions of the artist, lay in a fizzling, sputtering, snorting heap upon the unsympathetic lava blocks?
