faze

Etymology

It is an American variant of the dialect verb feeze, to drive off or frighten,^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} which Etymonline places in Kent.^[3] That verb is inherited from Middle English fesen (“to drive away, frighten, discomfit”),^[8][4][5] inherited from Old English fēsian (“to drive away, put to flight”), also fȳsian.^[8][4][9][3] Bosworth–Toller glosses the Old English verb with Latin fugō (“to put to flight”).^[9] It corresponds to Swedish fösa (“to drive away”) and Norwegian föysa,^[4][3][2] and Barnhart and Etymonline trace the group to a Proto-Germanic verb.^[4][3] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English call the Old English verb of unknown origin,^[7][6] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged suggests a link with Norwegian fuse (“to gush, rush”) and Old Norse fjúka (“to be driven by the wind”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

To discompose or disturb: 1830, in the Western Monthly Review.^[2][5][3] Dictionary.com dates it 1820–30, as an Americanism.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Ayto notes that the word is now mainly American but has a history back to Old English.^[11] Its source feeze meant to drive off or put to flight from Old English to the late 17th century, and to frighten from about 1440;^[2] the threat I'll feeze you gave it the senses "to do for" (1609, in Shakespeare) and "to beat" (1612).^[2] The noun feeze, a rush or violent impact, is in Chaucer, and in the United States it came to mean a state of alarm, recorded from 1825;^[2] the Dictionary of American Regional English has putting him in a fease in Rhode Island records of 1647,^[12] and Bartlett (1848) explained to be in a feeze as being in a state of excitement.^[13][3] American English then gave the verb the spelling faze and the sense "to disconcert".^[2][11] The Dictionary of American Regional English also has faze as a noun, a state of worry, from a diary of the 1860s, and "an injury" in New Jersey in 1894.^[12] The Shorter Oxford notes that the verb is usually used in negative contexts.^[7]

Timeline

• 1830 – to disconcert, disturb.^[2][5]
• 1860s – noun, a state of worry.^[12]
• 1894 – noun, an injury, in New Jersey.^[12]

Meanings

Verb

1. To disconcert or daunt; to upset someone's composure, mostly in negative statements: The heckling didn't faze the speaker at all.^[14][5][7]

Word family

• unfazed

Related words

• feeze
• phase

Usage notes

Merriam-Webster Unabridged also records the spelling phase, less commonly,^[5] and the Shorter Oxford gives it as a variant;^[7] Dictionary.com lists phase as a word confused with it.^[10] The Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins calls it informal and originally American,^[15] and Dalzell lists it as slang.^[16]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
10. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
12. ^ a b c d Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
13. ^ Bartlett, John Russell (1848), Dictionary of Americanisms, New York: Bartlett and Welford
14. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
15. ^ Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge