fuzz1
/fʌz
/noun
1A frizzy mass of hair or fibre: a fuzz of black hair [mass noun]: his face was covered with white fuzz...
- The baby had crystal blue eyes like her mother, and a little fuzz of raven black hair like her parents.
- Even his trademark shaven head is covered in a soft brown fuzz of hair.
- His name was Stephen, and he had a short white fuzz of hair, and an auburn sheen to his fur.
Synonyms
hair, fluff, fur, down, floss, fine hair
1.1A blurred image: she saw Jess surrounded by a fuzz of sunlight...
- I gesture outside the door, then gaze up at the blue-grey fuzz of images on the bank of security monitors in front of Don.
- The tree of heaven opposite the church of Saints Peter and Paul was still entombed deep inside its branches but the faintest yellow-green fuzz had begun to blur the outline of willows on the banks of the River Vistula.
- There was a dull fuzz in her head, images tried to form, secrets whispered gently at the edge of her consciousness but she pushed them aside unsure of her readiness to hear such things.
2A buzzing or distorted sound, especially one deliberately produced as an effect on an electric guitar.But that track also has a midsection scored by the hot fuzz of an electric guitar, illustrating Honda's longstanding flair for odd assemblage....
- Electronic fuzz oscillates in the background, as Matters sways in and out of a lilting tune, lines like ‘We played hide and seek in waterfalls’ sharing the same melodic cadence as the album title.
- The fuzz sounds like a hammer hitting sheet metal.
Synonyms
distortion, buzz, hiss, fizz, buzzing, hissing, fizzing, white noise
verb
1Make or become blurred or indistinct: [with object]: snow fuzzes the outlines of the signs [no object]: her head fuzzed and the classroom swam...
- His face fuzzed, blurred and then disappeared completely.
- Sheehan was reading the papers at the breakfast table one summer Sunday when the upper right-hand quadrant of his vision began to blur and fuzz as if he were adjusting an old TV.
- He deserved to have his heart broken, and even five years later, the memories of high school beginning to blur and fuzz in my head, I knew I'd done a pretty good job of it.
2 [no object] (Of hair) become frizzy: her hair fuzzed out uncontrollably in the heat
Origin
Late 16th century: probably of Low German or Dutch origin; compare with Dutch voos, Low German fussig 'spongy'.
If you are ‘caught by the fuzz’ you are arrested by the police. This fuzz is a different word from the one that means ‘a frizzy mass’, and may be a form of fuss, from the idea of the police ‘making a fuss’. It has been used since the 1920s and originated in the USA. The other fuzz entered English in the late 17th century, probably from Dutch or German, although fuzzy is recorded earlier, in around 1600, when it meant ‘spongy’. Fuzzy logic is a form of logic in which a statement can be partially true or false rather than having to be absolutely one or the other.
Rhymes
fuzz2
/fʌz/noun (the fuzz) informal
The police: Keep down! It’s the fuzz!...
- It wound up being right across from a police station, and after a little while the fuzz came out and told us to move.
- It seemed to take forever before the cops, the fuzz, the pigs finally turned and moved single file over the low barrier, back towards that awful blaze, empty-handed and without a perpetrator.
- Instead of letting them march, though, the fuzz split them off into ever-smaller enclaves of ever-more-frustrated would-be street-marchers.
Origin
1920s (originally US): of unknown origin.