foozle

English

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

foozle (third-person singular simple present foozles, present participle foozling, simple past and past participle foozled)

To do something clumsily or awkwardly; to bungle.
- 1921 Oct. 2, "One-handed drivers menace to public," Vancouver Sun (Canada), p. 17 (retrieved 30 Aug. 2011):
  Every baseball fan is acquainted with the sarcastic reminder, "two hands are the fashion nowadays," often hurled at the infielder who foozles an attempt at a grandstand play in the form of a one-handed catch.
- c. 1900, F. Anstey, Humor and Fantasy:
  I wouldn't have trusted dear old Monty to break the death of a bluebottle without managing to foozle it somehow.

do awkwardly

foozle (plural foozles)

A fogey.
- 1838, Denis Ignatius Moriarty, The Wife Hunter:
  There is an old foozle of a lord, the earl of Ballyduff, who lives in London, and who is determined on nominating to his vacant borough
A mistaken shot in golf.
- 1923, Stacy Aumonier, Odd Fish:
  Even poor Mr. Lloyd George cannot go out of his front door, or make a foozle on the ninth green, without being snapshotted, sketched, and probably filmed.
(video games, slang) The final boss character in a game.
- 2005, William Abner, Gamer's Tome of Ultimate Wisdom 2006
  The original Ultima was a kill-the-foozle type of game where the goal was to destroy the Gem of Power, which was held by an evil wizard named Mondain.

“foozle”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, →ISBN.