†1. Probably: (a nickname for) a native or resident of the English city of Manchester. Obsolete.Perhaps with reference to the loose cotton fibres associated with carding, spinning, and weaving cotton in the city's mills.Apparently an isolated use.

2. colloquial. A thing which is fuzzy or has a fuzzy texture or appearance; a furred or feather-covered animal; a piece of lint or fluff, etc.In quot. 1870 with reference to tightly curled or frizzy hair.

3. Originally: (a nickname for) a member of the Hadendoa people fighting on the Mahdist side against Egyptian and British forces in the conflict in Sudan in 1881–99. Later also more generally: a member of the Hadendoa or another Beja people of Sudan, Egypt, and Eritrea. Cf. fuzzy-wuzzy n. 1. Now chiefly historical, and likely to be considered offensive.In quot. 1893 without article, as though a proper name: used to refer to the Hadendoa or other Mahdist soldiers collectively.Originally with allusion to a traditional hairstyle of Hadendoa and other Beja men, with a full, bushy crown and ringlets at the back and sides.Occasionally used (esp. in colonial and imperial contexts) more generally with the offensive and derogatory sense ‘a black or dark-skinned person; a non-white indigenous person’ (see e.g. 1971), but much less frequently than the corresponding sense of fuzzy wuzzy (fuzzy-wuzzy n. 2).

4. colloquial (originally and chiefly U.S.). Usually in plural and with the. A pleasant, comforting, or friendly feeling. Chiefly in to give (a person) the fuzzies: to produce such a feeling in (a person). Cf. the more common warm fuzzy n., warm-and-fuzzy n.Recorded earliest in educational contexts, referring to the practice of asking children in a class to praise, applaud, or compliment one another in turn, in an exchange of recognition and emotional support, based upon ideas from a story by American psychotherapist and writer Claude Steiner, in which people carry and exchange good feelings in the form of small furry creatures called (Warm) Fuzzies (see quot. 1970).

1. Not firm or sound in substance; spongy. Obsolete exc. dialect. (Cf. fozy adj.)

2. Frayed into loose fibres; covered with fuzz; fluffy, downy.

4. Of hair: Frizzy, fluffy.

fuzzy-headed adj.

fuzzy-legged adj.

fuzzy-minded adj.

fuzzy-ball n. = fuzz-ball n.

fuzzy-wuzzy n. offensive slang a black person, esp. one with tightly curled hair; spec. (a) †a Sudanese warrior (obsolete); (b) Australian a native of New Guinea.

ˈfuzzily adv.

ˈfuzziness n.

ˈfuzzyism n. [-ism suffix] Photography the studied production of ‘fuzzy’ pictures.