faze
/feɪz/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.91 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To frighten or cause hesitation; to daunt, put off (usually used in the negative); to disconcert, to perturb.
Informal; Transitive verb
Example Sentences
- "Jumping out of an airplane does not faze him, yet he is afraid to ride a roller coaster."
- "But we're / Not getting anywhere. Nothing / fazes her."
- "In the dreary world / That we're living in / It's fashionable / To let nothing faze you"
- "Some individuals "can't hold their liquor" and become thoroughly intoxicated on small amounts of alcohol which would not faze most social drinkers."
- "He sticks it out even further in the scherzo, fazing the listener with displaced accents, and then inserting a malicious pause just when we seem to have found our feet."
- "[Gareth] Southgate should be absolutely clear now that [Jordan] Pickford is not fazed by the big occasion but, on the flip-side, he might not be too thrilled his goalkeeper was involved so much."
Etymology
From English dialectal (Kentish) feeze, feese (“to alarm, discomfit, frighten”), from Middle English fēsen (“to chase, drive away; put to flight; discomfit, frighten, terrify”), from Old English fēsan, fȳsan (“to send forth; to hasten, impel, stimulate; to banish, drive away, put to flight; to prepare oneself”), from Proto-West Germanic *funsijan, from Proto-Germanic *funsijaną (“to predispose, make favourable; to make ready”), from Proto-Indo-European *pent- (“to go; to walk”). The word is cognate with Old Saxon fūsian (“to strive”), Old Norse fýsa (“to drive, goad; to admonish”). Citations for faze in the Oxford English Dictionary start in 1830, and usage was established by 1890.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /feɪz/
- British English: /feɪz/