Hazy

How to spell hazy

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hazy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hazy mean?

1. adjectiveCovered by a thin mist or light cloud that softens and obscures the view.
2. adjectiveVague, unclear, or only partly remembered.

Hazy in a sentence

• The distant hills looked hazy in the early morning light.

• His memory of the meeting was hazy, and he could not recall the exact figures.

• A hazy summer sky kept the heat trapped over the city all afternoon.

• The instructions were so hazy that nobody knew which form to submit.

Where does hazy come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

Hazy is a word whose origins are genuinely murky, which suits its meaning rather well. It first appears in English in the late 1600s, often in the logbooks and journals of sailors describing thick, misty weather at sea; the spelling 'hawsey' and 'haisy' both turn up before 'hazy' settled in. Curiously, the adjective seems to have come first, and the noun 'haze' was formed afterwards as a back-formation from it, which is the reverse of the usual pattern. Beyond that the trail goes cold: some scholars link it to the Old English 'hasu' or 'haswa', meaning 'grey' or 'dusky', while others suspect a connection to the French 'haseux', though neither is certain. By the early 1700s the literal sense of misty air had broadened into the figurative one, describing memories, ideas, or thinking that lack sharp definition. Because the long 'a' sound is spelled with a plain 'z', the word is easy enough to write once you remember it follows haze, not 'hasey'.

How the word is built

• haze (mist, lack of clarity)
• -y (adjective suffix: full of, characterised by)