FIZZLE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Fizzle

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/fˈɪzəl/ Listen

verb

fizzle v. i. (past & past part. fizzled; pres. part. fizzling)

To make a hissing sound. "It is the easiest thing, sir, to be done, As plain as fizzling."

To make a ridiculous failure in an undertaking, especially after a good start; to achieve nothing. (Colloq. or Low) "A four-day rally in stocks fizzled yesterday amid renewed fears that strong economic growth may prompt the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates."

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.)

noun

fizzle n. A failure or abortive effort; a fiasco. (Colloq.)

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Etymology of 'Fizzle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Fizzle" Quotes from Famous Books

... me to go there again," she declared, "and I consider myself very fortunate to have escaped from it with my life. It 's filled with all sorts of horrible things, that fizzle up and go off, or that make you turn some dreadful color if you look at them. I expect to hear a great clap some day, and half an hour afterward to see Gordon brought home in several hundred small ...

— Confidence • Henry James

... playing a rather high game, violating international law every day. ... England's attempt to starve Germany has been a fizzle. Germany will be better off this summer than she was two years ago, have more food on hand. There are no more men in Germany outside of the Army. Practically every one has been called out who could carry a gun, but the women are running the mills and the prisoners ...

— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... more than watching them. But I can't. Get me on that machine, and I have to go. Get me on anything, and I have to go. And I don't want to go a bit. WHY should a man rush about like a rocket, all pace and fizzle? Why? It makes me furious. I can assure you, sir, I go scorching along the road, and cursing aloud at myself for doing it. A quiet, dignified, philosophical man, that's what I am—at bottom; and here I am dancing with rage and swearing like a drunken tinker ...

— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... rich man's son, but some one who has had a chance to observe life. Make him a buffer between Mrs. Killigrew and the whining cheats. And above all, no young man who has social entree to your house. That kind of a private secretary is always a fizzle." ...

— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... not been on the Brule long enough to vote, office seekers kept coming through, asking the indorsement of The Wand. "It's no wonder the men we elect to run things make such a fizzle when they get into office," Ma Wagor snorted one day with impatience; "they wear themselves plumb out ...

— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

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