fuzz
/fʌz/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.06 in modern English
25
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A distorted sound, especially from an electric guitar or other amplified instrument.
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "His cheeks were like peaches, with much the same sort of fuzz over them."
- "Once the eaglets are born—tiny balls of white fuzz—the adult eagles prove that birds can be as protective and solicitous of their young as humans."
- "...scientific advances happen more often at the frontier of representation, at the edge of resolution where an image dissolves into fuzz and blur."
- ""Fuzz testing" or "fuzzing" is a technique for software testing that provides random data ("fuzz") to the inputs of a program."
- "This gives a good soft clipping effect and a good fuzz sound."
- "I think I'm in a fuzz, and don't know what I ſay, I never ſaw the like."
Etymology
Uncertain. Some dictionaries suggest a Germanic source; compare Low German fussig (“loose; spongy”), Dutch voos (“unsound; rotten”). Others, such as Webster's New College Dictionary, suggest a back-formation from fuzzy. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests, “Perhaps imitative of the action of blowing away light particles.”