Feeze

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. Dialect verb meaning to drive something off or scare it away ; to set something in order or adjust it so it works properly
2. Chiefly Scottish verb for chasing or startling an animal away ; a regional term for arranging or tidying something into proper condition
3. Regional word meaning to scare or drive off a creature ; an older dialect verb for putting something right or into good order

Etymology: Ancient ideas about rushing and driving are tangled up in this word's roots. Its Old English ancestor, "fēsian," meant "to drive away, put to flight," and it shared a source with a verb meaning "to hasten or rush." Some of the word's older background is disputed, so the earliest step is hard to pin down. The verb and the noun share their history. The noun "feeze," meaning a scare that sends animals running, grew out of the same Middle English verb "fesen," which was carried forward from Old English. In other words, the noun is simply the act of driving away, turned into a thing people do. The Scots form "feeze" is a different route to the same spelling. There it was a word for a screw, traced back through Dutch and Old French to Latin "vītis," meaning "vine." That screw sense is unrelated to the hunting sense, so the two just happen to look alike today.