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fizzle - 5 dictionary results
fiz⋅zle
[fiz-uh
l] 
verb, -zled, -zling, noun –verb (used without object)
| 1. | to make a hissing or sputtering sound, esp. one that dies out weakly. |
| 2. | Informal. to fail ignominiously after a good start (often fol. by out): The reform movement fizzled out because of poor leadership. |
–noun
| 3. | a fizzling, hissing, or sputtering. |
| 4. | Informal. a failure; fiasco. |
Synonyms:
2. miscarry, collapse, founder.
2. miscarry, collapse, founder.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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|
Link To fizzle
| fiz·zle (fĭz'əl) intr.v. fiz·zled, fiz·zling, fiz·zles
A failure; a fiasco. [Probably from obsolete fise, a breaking wind, from Middle English, of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse fīsa, to break wind.] Word History: Philemon Holland, in his 1601 translation of Pliny's Natural History, wrote that if asses eat a certain plant, "they will fall a fizling and farting." Holland's asses provide a vivid example of the original meaning of the word fizzle, which was, in the decorous phrasing of the Oxford English Dictionary, "to break wind without noise." During the 19th century fizzle took on a related but more respectable sense, "to hiss, as does a piece of fireworks," illustrated by a quotation from the November 7, 1881, issue of the London Daily News: "unambitious rockets which fizzle doggedly downwards." In the same century fizzle also took on figurative senses, one of which seems to have been popular at Yale. The Yale Literary Magazine for 1849 helpfully defines the word as follows: "Fizzle, to rise with modest reluctance, to hesitate often, to decline finally; generally, to misunderstand the question." The figurative sense of fizzle that has caught on is the one most familiar today, "to fail or die out." |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source
Fizzle
Fiz"zle\ (f[i^]z"z'l), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Fizzled (-z'ld); p. pr. & vb. n. Fizzling (-zl[i^]ng).] [See Fizz.]1. To make a hissing sound. It is the easiest thing, sir, to be done, As plain as fizzling. --B. Jonson. 2. To make a ridiculous failure in an undertaking. [Colloq. or Low] To fizzle out, to burn with a hissing noise and then go out, like wet gunpowder; hence, to fail completely and ridiculously; to prove a failure. [Colloq.]Fizzle
Fiz"zle\, n. A failure or abortive effort. [Colloq.]
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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Language Translation for : fizzle
Spanish:
esfumarse, apagarse,
German:
mißlingen,
Japanese:
失敗に終った
fizzle
c.1532, "to break wind without noise," probably altered from obsolete fist, from M.E. fisten "break wind" (see feisty). Sense of "failure, fiasco" is from 1846, originally U.S. college slang for "failure in an exam."
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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