In sense 2 also 7 fuss. [Perh. imitative of the action of blowing away light particles. Cf., however, FOZY and the cognate words there cited.]
1. Loose volatile matter; a mass of fine, light, fluffy particles.
1674. N. Fairfax, A Treatise of the Bulk and Selvedge of the World, 125–6. A Snayl or Dodman, which is not only not warm, but to our feeling, very cold, is fain to brood its as cold sweatty eggs, nested upon a cold wet earth, bespiewing them about with the fuzze of a cold clammy froth, in coldish raughty weather.
1710. Prior, Pontius & Pontia, ii. Misc. Wks. (1740), 107.
| One ask’d, if that high fuzz of hair | |
| Was, bona fide, all your Own. |
1840. Smart, Fuzz, volatile matter.
1854. Hawthorne, Eng. Note-bks., II. 319. The old Dutch masters, who seem to me the most wonderful set of men that ever handled a brush. Such lifelike representations of cabbages, onions, brass kettles, and kitchen crockery; such blankets, with the woollen fuzz upon them; such everything I never thought the skill of man could produce!
1865. Miss Cary, Ballads & Lyrics, 61.
| Your hair! why, you ’ve only a little gray fuzz! | |
| And your beard ’s white! but that can be beautifully dyed; | |
| And your legs are n’t but just half as long as they was; | |
| And then—stars and garters! your vest is so wide! |
1881. The Saturday Review, LI. 12 Feb., 203/2. The expensive valentines are gaudy chromolithographic objects, fluttering in a fuzz of paper-lace.
† 2. = FUSS-BALL. Obs.
1601. Holland, Pliny, II. 7. Puffes, Fusbals or Fusses.
1656. Ridgley, Pract. Physick, 45. The most conservent is that Toadstool which is called a Fuss.
1701–2. De La Pryme, Diary (Surtees), 249. The bottom part of a great cup mushroom or fuz.
3. Photgr. = FUZZINESS.
1889. Anthony’s Photogr. Bull., II. 370. The importance of knowing beforehand by what standard (focus or fuzz) we are to be judged.
4. Comb.: fuzz-type, a jocular name for a photograph with (intentional) blurred effect; fuzz-wig, a wig of crisp curls; so fuzz-wigged adj.
1848. Thackeray, Bk. Snobs, xi. A shovel-hatted fuzz-wigged Silenus. Ibid. (1854), J. Leech’s Pict. (1869), 327. There was Rowlandson’s ‘Doctor Syntax:’ Doctor Syntax in a fuzz-wig, on a horse with legs like sausages, riding races, making love, frolicking with rosy exuberant damsels.
1893. Brit. Jrnl. Photogr., XL. 750. However tolerable 14 × 12 fuzztype (as they have been jocularly called) may be.
