[f. FRIZZ v.2: see -LE.] a. intr. = FRIZZ v.2 a. b. trans. To fry, toast, or grill (with a sputtering noise).
a. 1839. Thackeray, Fatal Boots (1869), 362. A nice fresh steak was frizzling on the gridiron.
1863. Confess. Ticket-of-Leave Man, 77. Jack dropped the candle, and set some of the wigs frizzling.
1874. Dasent, Tales Fjeld, 187. He heard the molten lead bubbling and frizzling in our clerk’s throat.
b. 1858. Hawthorne, Fr. & It. Jrnls., II. 134. When the sun had the fairest chance to frizzle me.
1888. Burgon, Lives of Twelve Good Men, I. iv. 388. It was a ‘fad’ of the future Archbishop to pull a herring daily from the string, and to frizzle it—sine ullâ solennitate—for breakfast.
Hence Frizzled, Frizzling ppl. adjs. Also Frizzle sb., the action of the vb.
1852. Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., iv. Aunt Chloe … presiding … over certain frizzling items in a stewpan.
1860. All Year Round, 460. My frizzling brains.
1891. Rutland Gloss., s.v. ‘The doctor says as how he’s to hev some frizzled mutton.’
1894. Crockett, Raiders, iii. 20. There is no finer breakfast than flounders fried in oatmeal with a little salt butter as soon as ever they come out of the water, with their tails jerking Flip, flap, in the frizzle of the pan.
