a. [f. FUZZ sb.1 + -Y1. Cf. FOZY.]

1

  1.  Not firm or sound in substance; spongy. Obs. exc. dial. (Cf. FOZY.)

2

1616.  Surfl. & Markh., Country Farme, IV. iv. 498. If your ground be subiect to anie filthie soft mosse, or fuzzie grasse, which is both vnsauourie and vnwholesome for beasts, and also choaketh and deuoureth vp all better herbage.

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1664.  Power, Experimental Philosophy, I. 5. A fuzzy kinde of substance like little sponges, with which she hath lined the soles of her [the Common Fly’s] feet.

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1725.  Kelly, in Phil. Trans., XXXIV. 122. We meet with a fuzzy sort of Earth, that we call Moss, proper to make Turf for Fuel.

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1728.  T. Sheridan, Persius (1739), 21. As dry and fuzzy as an old Branch spread over with spungy Cork.

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1828.  Carr, Craven Gloss. (ed. 2), 171. Fuzzy, Light and spungy.

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1869.  in Peacock, Lonsdale Gloss., 33. Light and spongy.

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  2.  Frayed into loose fibers; covered with fuzz; fluffy, downy.

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1714.  Steele, Englishman, No. 40, 5 Jan., 259. Their Linnen, of the same Hue, and so fuzzy that it was not easy to distinguish.

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1823.  Moor, Suffolk Words, s.v. The fine ends of silk or cotton … when they appear make the article ‘wear fuzzy.’

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1857.  Hughes, Tom Brown, I. v. Most of you going in those fuzzy, dusty, padded first-class carriages.

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1860.  All Year Round, No. 46. 460/2. I give two shillings for nine pennyworth of muslin with gilt fuzzy ends, and twist them Levantwise round my frizzling brains.

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1885.  T. L. De Vinne, in Century Mag., XXX. Sept., 808/2. Seen through a magnifying glass, rough or plain paper has a surface on either side made up of fuzzy elevations and depressions, not unlike that of cotton cloth, but on a smaller scale.

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1894.  Times, 9 Feb., 8/3. There are so many fuzzy politicians who have not hearts but only cotton wool in the place of them.

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  3.  Blurred, indistinct.

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1778.  Phil. Trans., LXVIII. 401. Venus appeared very dim and fuzzy.

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1832.  G. Downes, Letters from Continental Countries, I. 30. The fuzzy glass.

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1871.  Daily News, 20 Dec., 2/4. It makes the picture more ‘fuzzy.’

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1884.  R. Walker, John Tenniel and Caricature Art, in Good Words, XXV. Dec., 819/2. His [Leech’s] drawing is rougher and fuzzier, and his composition and his lines lack the stateliness and sweep of Tenniel’s.

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  4.  Of hair: Frizzy, fluffy.

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a. 1825.  Forby, Voc. E. Anglia, Fuzzy, rough and shaggy.

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1856.  F. E. Paget, Owlet Owlst., 171. There was a horrid-looking black man, with thick lips, and fuzzy hair, that came in a gig this afternoon, and I heard Miss Hucklebuckle say it would be so interesting to hear him speak. I told nurse, and she said she thought it would be awful work to listen to a nigger.

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1870.  Thornbury, Tour Eng., II. xxi. 83. Gloriana was only sixty-seven, thin as a herring, painted, and addicted to fuzzy red wigs, stuck with jewels, and ruffs as big as cart wheels.

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  5.  Comb., as fuzzy-headed, -legged adjs.; fuzzy-ball = FUZZ-BALL; fuzzy-wuzzy, a soldier’s nickname for the typical Soudanese warrior, from his method of dressing his hair.

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c. 1850.  Denham Tracts (1895), II. 48. The dust of a *fuzzy ball cast in the eyes will cause blindness.

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1885.  Spectator, 8 Aug., 1043/1. The writer naïvely betrays his prejudice. After admitting the value of the scouts who were told off to the outposts, and whose keenness of sight was of great use in discriminatig between a crawling Arab and a waving bush he says,—‘Somehow I never felt any trust in them.’ They were dark-skinned, *fuzzie-headed, rather unpleasantly belarded; and ‘somehow’ the author, in common with others, did not like them.

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1833.  T. E. Hook, The Widow and the Marquess, xii. He came out without a hat, with a fine bantam cock perched upon his head, and a couple of *fuzzy-legged hens roosting upon his shoulders.

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1892.  R. Kipling, Barrack-r. Ballads 10.

        So ’ere’s to you, *Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ’ome in the Soudan;
You’re a pore benighted ’eathen but a first-class fightin’ man.

29

  Hence Fuzzily adv., Fuzziness. Also Fuzzyism [-ISM], Photogr., the studied production of ‘fuzzy’ pictures.

30

1613.  Markham, English Husbandman, H ij. A little paire of round wheeles, which … doth so certainly guide the Plough in his true furrow that it can neither … drownd through the easie lightnesse of the earth, nor runne too shallow through the fussinesse of the mould.

31

1866.  Athenæum, No. 2042, 15 Dec., 801/1. A certain ‘fuzziness,’ as artists say, appears in many examples.

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1867.  Miss Broughton, Not Wisely, but too Well (1869), 10. They [locks of hair] grew on a fairly white brow, and thence went off, crisply, fuzzily, in a most unaffected wave.

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1874.  M. Collins, Transmigration, II. xiv. 221. She was barefooted; her hair was a bunch of fuzziness; her eyes were immoderately funny.

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1886.  Century Mag., XXXI. 477. Tomentose appearance of stem or fuzziness of stem just below the heads.

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1894.  Brit. Jrnl. Photogr., XLI. Supp. 5. A prelude to a descent into Fuzzyism.

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