fozy

English

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Adjective

fozy (comparative more fozy, superlative most fozy)

1. (Scotland) spongy; soft; fat and puffy
   • 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter I, in Rob Roy. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 16:

     He maun be a saft sap, wi' a head nae better than a fozy frosted turnip—it wad hae ta'en a hantle o' them to scaur Andrew Fairservice out o' his tale.

   • 1847, Scoundrel Will's advice to his sons:

     In years when grain was raw and light,
     So fozy it would scarcely dight,
     I look'd around me, left and right,
     ⁠As sharp's a razor,
     Till I got some unskilful wight
     ⁠To buy by measure.

   • c. 1900, Neil Munro, John Splendid:

     Just a plain, stout, fozy, sappy burrow-man, keeping a gospel shop, with scarcely so much of a man's parts as will let him fend a blow in the face.

Derived terms

• foziness

 

References

• “fozy”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.