fuzzyn.
/ˈfʌzi/, U.S. /ˈfəzi/ Now usually derogatory and offensive when used of a person.† 1. Probably: (a nickname for) a native or resident of the English city of Manchester. Obsolete.Perhaps with reference to the loose cotton fibres associated with carding, spinning, and weaving cotton in the city's mills.Apparently an isolated use.
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1825 Kaleidoscope 15 Feb. 276/2 [In a poem satirizing proposals to build a canal connecting Manchester with the mouth of the River Dee.] Hail to the Fuzzies! in wisdom advancing..; Bless ev'ry bright thought from such crania glancing.
2. colloquial. A thing which is fuzzy or has a fuzzy texture or appearance; a furred or feather-covered animal; a piece of lint or fluff, etc.In quot. 1870 with reference to tightly curled or frizzy hair.
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1870 Daily Memphis (Tennessee) Avalanche 19 June You fain would think in the vanity of your hearts that your bunch of blonde fuzzies, painted lips and white skin are too good to be bestowed on any save a rich man.
1913 Ladysmith (Wisconsin) News-Budget 29 Aug. If fire is applied to the web it [sc. the tent caterpillar], with its horde of minute young fuzzies, is totally destroyed.
1922 Christian Reg. June 525/2 Out in the meadow..a fuzzy dandelion I blow, And..when all the fuzzies blow away I scamper home without delay.
1963 Kingbird May 82 Ringnecks seem generally more trusting than most ducks... Remain real quiet in the canoe, and the watchful female and her 8 or 9 fuzzies may feed past..within 80 or 90 feet.
1992 C. Bram Almost Hist. i. 29 ‘Tie looks good. You got a fuzzy on your shoulder, though.’ He reached over to pluck it off.
2000 St. Petersburg (Florida) Times 26 May (North of Tampa section) 8/2 Over the years people have told her to get rid of her animals... ‘I tell them that I am a keeper of lost souls,’ she said, ‘a rescuer of four-legged fuzzies.’
2019 @TheSpvde 5 Oct. in twitter.com (accessed 23 Feb. 2022) I did see you eat some macaroni off the floor with a fuzzy on it.
3. Originally: (a nickname for) a member of the Hadendoa people fighting on the Mahdist side against Egyptian and British forces in the conflict in Sudan in 1881–99. Later also more generally: a member of the Hadendoa or another Beja people of Sudan, Egypt, and Eritrea. Cf. fuzzy-wuzzy n. 1. Now chiefly historical, and likely to be considered offensive.In quot. 1893 without article, as though a proper name: used to refer to the Hadendoa or other Mahdist soldiers collectively.Originally with allusion to a traditional hairstyle of Hadendoa and other Beja men, with a full, bushy crown and ringlets at the back and sides.Occasionally used (esp. in colonial and imperial contexts) more generally with the offensive and derogatory sense ‘a black or dark-skinned person; a non-white indigenous person’ (see e.g. 1971), but much less frequently than the corresponding sense of fuzzy wuzzy (fuzzy-wuzzy n. 2).
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the world > people > ethnicities > division of mankind by physical characteristics > non-white person > [noun]
person of colour1786
buck1800
coloured1832
Indiano1836
nigger1843
skepsel1844
native1846
non-white1864
fuzzy1890
fuzzy-wuzzy1892
monk1903
non-European1906
golliwog1916
wog1921
non-European1925
gook1935
boong1941
jungle bunny1966
Indio1969
the world > people > nations > native or inhabitant of Africa > native or inhabitant of North Africa > native or inhabitant of Sudan or Nile > [noun]
Nigritian1738
Sudan1799
Sudanese1826
Dinka1861
Sudani1874
fuzzy1890
fuzzy-wuzzy1892
Nilote1893
Nilotic1906
1884 Let. 25 Aug. in Taylorian (Merchant Taylor's School) Oct. 89 [Describing events in Suakin, Sudan.] I thought the Fuzzies were in full swoop down on us.
1885 Rocky Mountain News (Denver) 11 Aug. 6/7 Hadendowas, or Fuzzies (as they are aptly called), with frizzy hair and corkscrew curls.
1893 Pall Mall Gaz. 4 Oct. 2/3 The fanatical purposeful fervour of which our men learned something when they met Fuzzy in the Soudan.
1923 R. Kipling Land & Sea Tales 11 A wounded Sudanese—what our soldiers used to call a ‘fuzzy’.
1939 D. Newbold Let. 29 Dec. in Making of Mod. Sudan (1953) vi. 128 At the door of his mud house looking out on to the hills and watching the Fuzzies coming in to market with their camels laden with dom nuts.
1971 Times 12 Apr. 5/8 The archetypes of the Victorian imagination—the chaste curate, the adored baby, treacherous Ottoman and gay Paree, extravagant wops and quizzical fuzzies.
2019 J. Hancock Beyond Samovar (e-book ed.) My man had been killed in the Sudan, fighting the fuzzies.
4. colloquial (originally and chiefly U.S.). Usually in plural and with the. A pleasant, comforting, or friendly feeling. Chiefly in to give (a person) the fuzzies: to produce such a feeling in (a person). Cf. the more common warm fuzzy n., warm-and-fuzzy n.Recorded earliest in educational contexts, referring to the practice of asking children in a class to praise, applaud, or compliment one another in turn, in an exchange of recognition and emotional support, based upon ideas from a story by American psychotherapist and writer Claude Steiner, in which people carry and exchange good feelings in the form of small furry creatures called (Warm) Fuzzies (see quot. 1970).
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1970 C. Steiner in Transactional Anal. Bull. 9 146 You would..reach into your bag and pull out a Fuzzy... As soon as the Fuzzy saw the light of day it would smile and blossom into a..Warm Fuzzy. You then would lay it on the person's shoulder..and it would snuggle up and melt right against their skin and make them feel good all over.]
1973 Reading Specialist (Southeastern Michigan Reading Assoc.) Summer 26/1 Each student can be encouraged to set a daily goal for how many fuzzies he is going to give.
1977 Instructor (N.Y.) Feb. 56/2 When giving ‘fuzzies’ be careful not to frighten the child who becomes the center of attention.
1984 Educ. in North (Aberdeen Coll. of Educ.) 21 47 I get Fuzzies when I come home from school and get a nice cup of coffee.
2000 Spin Aug. 117/1 The animated comedy Antz..is girded by a political philosophy that honors pre-Soviet socialism while giving eight-year olds the fuzzies.
2016 W. Austin Sins of Father (e-book ed.) xvi As aggressive and studly as he was, Xavier had a gentle streak that gave her the fuzzies.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2022).
fuzzyadj.
/ˈfʌzi/, U.S. /ˈfəzi/ 1. Not firm or sound in substance; spongy. Obsolete exc. dialect. (Cf. fozy adj.)
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the world > matter > constitution of matter > lack of density > [adjective] > loose texture
loosec1374
solutec1440
dissolute1607
lax1615
fuzzy1616
incompact1616
waterish1665
incompacted1680
uncompact1705
laxy1716
unconsolidated1802
hover1851
unpacked1855
uncompacted1863
the world > matter > constitution of matter > softness > types of softness > [adjective] > spongy
moorisha1398
fungous?1440
spongy1539
fungy1578
sponge-like1594
airy1598
spongeous1607
fuzzy1616
spongoid1849
1616 G. Markham tr. C. Estienne et al. Maison Rustique (rev. ed.) iv. iv. 498 If your ground be subiect to anie filthie soft mosse, or fuzzie grasse, which is both vnsauourie and vnwholesome for beasts.
1664 H. Power Exper. Philos. i. 5 A fuzzy kinde of substance like little sponges.
1728 J. Kelly in Philos. Trans. 1726–7 (Royal Soc.) 34 122 A fuzzy sort of Earth, that we call Moss.
1728 T. Sheridan tr. Persius Satyrs (1739) 21 As dry and fuzzy as an old Branch spread over with Spungy Cork.
1824 W. Carr Horæ Momenta Cravenæ Fuzzy, light and spungy.
1869 J. C. Atkinson Peacock's Gloss. Dial. Hundred of Lonsdale
2. Frayed into loose fibres; covered with fuzz; fluffy, downy.
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the world > matter > constitution of matter > softness > types of softness > [adjective] > soft and fluffy
mossy1561
downy1578
mosy1578
thrummy1597
cotton wool1648
cottonary1658
cottonous1664
cottony1664
tozy1706
flewsey1712
fuzzy1713
furzy1720
floscular1822
fuffy1824
fluffy1825
flossy1845
flocculent1870
furry1876
1713 R. Steele Englishman No. 40. 259 Their Linnen of the same Hue, and so fuzzy that it was not easy to distinguish.
1823 E. Moor Suffolk Words (at cited word) The fine ends of silk or cotton..when they appear make the article ‘wear fuzzy’.
1857 T. Hughes Tom Brown's School Days i. iv. 82 Those fuzzy, dusty, padded first-class carriages.
1860 All Year Round 10 Mar. 460 Nine pennyworth of muslin with gilt fuzzy ends.
1885 Cent. Mag. 30 808 Seen through a magnifying glass, rough or plain paper has a surface..made up of fuzzy elevations and depressions, not unlike that of cotton cloth, but on a smaller scale.
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.
3.
a. Blurred, indistinct.
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the world > physical sensation > sight and vision > invisibility > [adjective] > indistinct
dimc1000
blinda1398
undistingued1398
obscure?a1450
undistinct1495
shadowed1588
undistinguishable1600
shady1626
blear1637
filmed1637
indistinguishable1642
crepusculous1646
adumbrated1650
oblite1650
faint1660
monogrammous1678
blurred1701
faintish1712
wispya1717
adumbrant1727
muzzy1744
indistinct1764
fuzzy1778
misty1797
shadowy1797
undistinguished1814
woolly1815
vague1822
furzy1825
mystified1833
slurred1843
feeble1860
smudginga1861
filmy1864
smudgy1865
blurry1884
slurry1937
1778 Philos. Trans. 1777 (Royal Soc.) 68 401 Venus appeared very dim and fuzzy.
1832 G. Downes Lett. from Continental Countries I. 30 The fuzzy glass.
1871 Daily News 20 Dec. 2/4 It makes the picture more ‘fuzzy’.
1884 Good Words Dec. 819/2 His drawing is rougher and fuzzier.
b. Of thought, etc.: imprecisely defined; confused, vague. Also of persons: inexact in thought or expression.
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the mind > mental capacity > intelligibility > misinterpretation > [adjective] > expressing wrongly or inexactly
misexpressive1817
fuzzy1937
the mind > mental capacity > knowledge > conformity with what is known, truth > disregard for truth, falsehood > error in belief or opinion > [adjective]
falsec1175
ungroundedc1380
ungroundable1395
erroneousc1400
wrongc1400
rotten1529
mistaken1540
sinistral1542
sinistrous1562
errorful1570
unsolid1593
unsound1595
misgrounded1606
mistaking1631
errorous1633
unbottomed1641
erratile1652
heterodox1654
unbased1860
misfelt1935
fuzzy1937
flaky1972
the mind > mental capacity > belief > uncertainty, doubt, hesitation > insecure knowledge, uncertainty > [adjective] > obscure, vague
cloudyc1400
indeterminatec1400
diffuse1430
diffused?1456
obscure?a1475
infinite1520
ambiguous1529
indistincta1530
nubilous1533
dark1557
undetermined1588
undefinite1589
undeterminate1603
indetermined1611
undefined1611
suspense1624
umbrageous1635
clouded1641
undeterminated1641
fuliginous1646
implicit1660
vague1690
diffusive1709
nubilose1730
foggy1737
unliquidated1780
hazy1781
indecisive1815
nebulous1817
penumbral1819
aoristic1846
scumbled1868
nubiform1873
out-of-focus1891
fuzzy1937
soft focus1938
society > leisure > the arts > literature > style of language or writing > obscurity > [adjective] > vague or inexplicit
oblique?a1475
overthwart1545
indirect1584
slenting1642
undeterminate1649
vaguea1661
wide1662
indeterminate1773
unexplicit1775
nebulose1799
imprecise1805
misty1816
nebulous1817
inexplicit1827
fuzzy1937
soft-focused1942
wifty-wafty1943
1937 Burlington Mag. Jan. p. xiv/2 The days of romantic blurriness are finished, and with them the indeterminate, fuzzy attitude towards art.
1939 Canad. Forum Aug. 166/1 There is also a deplorable display of fuzzy moralizing which is distinctly out of place.
1955 Time 5 Dec. 16/2 What an appalling display of fuzzy thinking in some of the world's leading editorial comment!
1958 J. K. Galbraith Affluent Society xxiv. 347 Since these achievements are not easily measured, as a goal they are ‘fuzzy’..a fatal condemnation.
1968 N. Chomsky in Listener 30 May 690/3 It seems to me that empiricists have been a bit fuzzy on this.
1974 A. Lurie War between Tates iii. 51 Encouraging each other in escapism and fuzzy thinking; absorbing bogus ideas.
1977 Time (Atlantic ed.) 19 Sept. 23/1 The line between using a plane legitimately to build good will for a corporation and using it illegally seems fuzzy.
c. Computing and Logic. (Of a set) defined so as to allow for imprecise membership criteria and for gradations of membership; pertaining or belonging to such a set; fuzzy logic, the logic of fuzzy sets and fuzzy concepts; fuzzy matching, (the facility for) matching items which are similar but not identical.
ΘΚΠ
society > computing and information technology > [adjective] > logic
logical1946
fuzzy1964
society > computing and information technology > [noun] > logic > fuzzy
fuzzy logic1964
fuzzy matching1964
the mind > mental capacity > philosophy > logic > [noun] > fuzzy logic
fuzzy logic1964
fuzzy matching1964
the mind > mental capacity > philosophy > logic > [adjective] > relating to systems or characteristics of
habitual1526
material1628
systematic1666
regulative1798
methodological1849
formala1856
grammatical1874
multivalued1934
fuzzy1964
1964 L. A. Zadeh et al. Memorandum (Rand Corporation) RM-4307-PR 1 The notion of a ‘fuzzy’ set..extends the concept of membership in a set to situations in which there are many, possibly a continuum of, grades of membership.
1969 IEEE Trans. Computers 18 348/2 In the digital field, pattern recognitions and classification are..potential users of fuzzy logic.
1973 Jrnl. Philos. Logic 2 491 Fuzzy concepts have had a bad press among logicians.
1976 J. H. Conway On Numbers & Games vii. 79 We say that g and h are confused or that g is fuzzy against h.
1979 Kandel & Lee Fuzzy Switching & Automata ii. 46 Definitions, theorems, proofs, etc., of fuzzy set theory always hold for non-fuzzy sets.
1982 IEEE Internat. Conf. Acoustics, Speech & Signal Processing II. 1162/1 One of the key problems in Image Understanding is the matching of two symbolic structures, a model and the result of a segmentation…We present..a formalism which can deal with the inexact or fuzzy matching of such structures in a highly parallel fashion.
1985 Computer Bull. Mar. 35/1 De Mori's work on acoustic phonetics is based on knowledge representation by the production rules of grammars, and reasoning by parsing, with fuzzy logic introduced at every stage.
1985 Computer Newslet. Mar. 2/1 There is a ‘fuzzy matching’ between what is requested and what is obtained from the system, in that they are only approximately related.
4. Of hair: Frizzy, fluffy.
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the world > life > the body > hair > types of hair > [adjective] > frizzy
fuzzya1825
kinkled1890
a1825 R. Forby Vocab. E. Anglia (1830) Fuzzy, rough and shaggy.
1856 F. E. Paget Owlet of Owlstone Edge 171 A..black man, with thick lips and fuzzy hair.
1870 W. Thornbury Tour Eng. II. xxi. 83 Fuzzy red wigs, stuck with jewels.
Compounds
C1. General attributive.
fuzzy-headed adj.
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1885 Spectator 8 Aug. 1043/1 They were..fuzzie-headed.
fuzzy-legged adj.
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1833 T. Hook Widow & Marquess xii A couple of fuzzy-legged hens.
fuzzy-minded adj.
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1983 P. Kurth Anastasia (1985) III. xii. 366 The world press rediscovered her in the early fifties—‘a fuzzy-minded, ageing woman’, as Time magazine reported.
C2.
fuzzy-ball n. = fuzz-ball n.
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the world > plants > particular plants > fungi > [noun] > puff-ball
wolf's-fista1300
puckfistc1300
puff1538
earth-puff1585
foist1593
fist1597
fuzz-ball1597
puff-fist1597
bunt1601
fuzz1601
bullfist1611
mully-puff1629
fist-ball1635
puffball1649
puck-ball1730
puffin1755
lycoperdon1756
frog cheese1766
puck1766
fuzzy-ballc1850
ball smut1925
c1850 Denham Tracts (1895) II. 48 The dust of a fuzzy ball cast in the eyes will cause blindness.
fuzzy-wuzzy n. offensive slang a black person, esp. one with tightly curled hair; spec. (a) †a Sudanese warrior (obsolete); (b) Australian a native of New Guinea.
ΘΠ
the world > people > ethnicities > division of mankind by physical characteristics > non-white person > [noun]
person of colour1786
buck1800
coloured1832
Indiano1836
nigger1843
skepsel1844
native1846
non-white1864
fuzzy1890
fuzzy-wuzzy1892
monk1903
non-European1906
golliwog1916
wog1921
non-European1925
gook1935
boong1941
jungle bunny1966
Indio1969
the world > people > nations > native or inhabitant of Africa > native or inhabitant of North Africa > native or inhabitant of Sudan or Nile > [noun]
Nigritian1738
Sudan1799
Sudanese1826
Dinka1861
Sudani1874
fuzzy1890
fuzzy-wuzzy1892
Nilote1893
Nilotic1906
1892 R. Kipling Barrack-room Ballads 10 So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan.
1940 N. Mitford Pigeon Pie iii. 41 There are Chinks and Japs and Fuzzy Wuzzies and Ice Creamers and Dagos, and so on.
1940 N. Mitford Pigeon Pie xiii. 208 You brutish Hun... Savage—Kaffir—fuzzy-wuzzy.
1965 Listener 30 Dec. 1067/1 England came up against a tough opponent after a series of easy victories against Tibetans, Zulus, and other relatively speaking unarmed fuzzy-wuzzies.
Derivatives
ˈfuzzily adv.
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the world > life > the body > hair > types of hair > [adverb] > frizzy
fuzzily1867
1867 R. Broughton Not Wisely (1869) 10 They [locks of hair]..thence went off crisply, fuzzily, in a most unaffected wave.
ˈfuzziness n.
ΘΚΠ
the world > matter > constitution of matter > lack of density > [noun] > loose texture
looseness1562
laxity1603
fuzziness1613
laxness1718
incompactness1727
foziness1821
the world > matter > constitution of matter > softness > types of softness > [noun] > sponginess
spongiousness1598
sponginess1610
fuzziness1613
foziness1821
the world > physical sensation > sight and vision > invisibility > [noun] > indistinctness
undistinction1647
shadowinessa1672
indistinctness1704
obscure1787
muzz1843
fogginess1853
blur1860
blurredness1864
veiling1864
fuzziness1866
blear1868
nebulousness1878
incertitude1883
velation1922
blurriness1937
the world > matter > constitution of matter > softness > types of softness > [noun] > softness and downiness or fluffiness
mosiness1538
toziness1727
downiness1797
fluffiness1860
fuzziness1874
flocculency1881
furriness1900
fleeciness1933
the mind > mental capacity > belief > uncertainty, doubt, hesitation > insecure knowledge, uncertainty > [noun] > unclear condition
obscurity1474
mist1532
cloud-lighta1536
indeterminateness1644
undistinction1647
indeterminacy1649
indistinction1651
undeterminateness1653
inestimability1678
undefinableness?1705
confusion1729
obnubilation1753
cloudiness1779
indistinctness1783
haze1790
haziness1796
vagueness1799
nebulosity1809
undefinednessa1832
undecidedness1897
indeterminism1928
fuzziness1973
smog1976
1613 G. Markham Eng. Husbandman: 1st Pt. H ij A little paire of round wheeles, which..doth so certainly guide the Plough..that it can neither..drownd through the easie lightnesse of the earth, nor runne too shallow through the fussinesse of the mould.
1866 Athenæum No. 2042. 801/1 A certain ‘fuzziness’, as artists say, appears in many examples.
1874 M. Collins Transmigr. II. xiv. 221 Her hair was a bunch of fuzziness.
1886 Cent. Mag. 31 477 Tomentose appearance of stem or fuzziness of stem.
1973 Jrnl. Philos. Logic 2 468 We have been employing a many-valued logic in an attempt to provide an initial explication of fuzziness in natural language.
1983 Nature 15 Dec. 637/2 Such a way of tackling the problem of AI seems to have inspired the now fashionable concern with what is called fuzziness, the attempt to build imprecision into programs.
ˈfuzzyism n. [-ism suffix] Photography the studied production of ‘fuzzy’ pictures.
ΘΚΠ
society > leisure > the arts > visual arts > photography > [noun] > types or methods generally
microphotography1857
pistolgraphy1860
portrait photography1864
pistolography1866
photochronography1887
snap-work1889
gallery-practice1891
photoreproduction1892
telephotography1892
Kodakry1893
fuzzyism1894
mugging1899
action photography1905
press photography1910
trick photography1913
Kodachrome1915
panchromatism1919
photo reporting1935
photojournalism1938
photo-reportage1939
strobe1949
streak photography1950
satellite photography1954
digital photography1972
time-lapse1975
1894 Brit. Jrnl. Photogr. 41 Supp. 5 A prelude to a descent into Fuzzyism.
Draft additions December 2004
fuzzy dice n. North American = fluffy dice n. at fluffy adj. Additions.
ΚΠ
1957 Los Angeles Times 26 Aug. iii. 5/1 Out must go those big fuzzy dice and huge dangling spiders that the kids—young and old—have been tacking over their dashboards.
1980 Christian Sci. Monitor (Nexis) 31 July b4 Tailpipes, chrome glove compartments,..and fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror.
2003 G. Shteyngart Russ. Debutante's Handbk. iv. xix. 192 Kostya sat in front, playing with the fuzzy dice.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1898; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1825
adj.1613