Faze

//feɪz// verb, slang

verb, slang ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To frighten or cause hesitation; to daunt, put off (usually used in the negative); to disconcert, to perturb. informal, transitive

    "Jumping out of an airplane does not faze him, yet he is afraid to ride a roller coaster."

  2. 2
    disturb the composure of wordnet

Example

More examples

"I told my mom I was gay and it didn't faze her at all."

Etymology

From English dialectal (Kentish) feeze, feese (“to alarm, discomfit, frighten”), from Middle English fēsen (“to chase, drive away; put to flight; discomfit, frighten, terrify”), from Old English fēsan, fȳsan (“to send forth; to hasten, impel, stimulate; to banish, drive away, put to flight; to prepare oneself”), from Proto-West Germanic *funsijan, from Proto-Germanic *funsijaną (“to predispose, make favourable; to make ready”), from Proto-Indo-European *pent- (“to go; to walk”). The word is cognate with Old Saxon fūsian (“to strive”), Old Norse fýsa (“to drive, goad; to admonish”). Citations for faze in the Oxford English Dictionary start in 1830, and usage was established by 1890.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.