fizzle
pronunciation
How to pronounce fizzle in British English:
UK [ˈfɪzl]
How to pronounce fizzle in American English:
US [ˈfɪzəl]
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- Verb:
- end weakly
Word Origin
- fizzle
- fizzle: [16] Originally, fizzle meant ‘fart silently or unobtrusively’: ‘And then in court they poisoned one another with their fizzles’, Benjamin Walsh’s translation of Aristophanes’ Knights 1837. Then in the mid-19th century it started to be used for a ‘weak spluttering hissing sound’, and hence figuratively ‘end feebly’. In the earlier sense, fizzle was probably a derivative of the now obsolete English verb fist ‘fart’ (source of feisty), which came ultimately from Indo-European *pezd- (no doubt imitative of the sound of breaking wind).The later sense is close enough semantically to suggest that it is probably a metaphorical extension of the earlier, but it could also be a new formation, based on fizz [17] (which was also of onomatopoeic origin).=> feisty
- fizzle (v.)
- 1530s, "to break wind without noise," probably altered from obsolete fist, from Middle English fisten "break wind" (see feisty) + frequentative suffix -le. Related: Fizzled; fizzling. Meaning "make a noise as of a liquid or gas forced out a narrow aperture" is from 1859, "usually with special reference to the weakness and sudden diminution or cessation of such sound" [Century Dictionary], hence the figurative sense "prove a failure, stop abruptly after a more-or-less brilliant start." But this sense is earlier and dates to at least 1847 in American English college slang, along with the noun sense of "failure, fiasco" (1846), also originally U.S. college slang, "a failure in answering an examination by a professor." Barnhart says it is "not considered as derived from the verb." Halliwell ("Archaic and Provincial Words," 1846) has fizzle (v.) as "To do anything without noise," which might connect the college slang with the older word via some notion of mumbled and stifled performance: In many colleges in the United States, this word is applied to a bad recitation, probably from the want of distinct articulation, which usually attends such performances. It is further explained in the Yale Banger, November 10, 1846: "This figure of a wounded snake is intended to represent what in technical language is termed a fizzle. The best judges have decided that to get just one third of the meaning right constitutes a perfect fizzle." [John Bartlett, "A Collection of College Words and Customs," Cambridge, 1851]
Example
- 1. Analysis : u.s. factory jobs rebound seen destined to fizzle
- 2. The danger now is that even the bravura economic performance of the past few years may fizzle .
- 3. America also promises to stiffen its backing for israel at the un and in particular to veto moves to endorse a palestinian declaration of independence if the talks fizzle .
- 4. Should the demonstrations fizzle out by the end of the week , amid popular exasperation , the trick may well lie in finding a way for the unions to save face .