Mizzy

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Describing weather that is damp and hazy, with fine rain hanging in the air and reducing visibility
2. Characterizing a day or sky that is murky with light, drifting rain, the kind that soaks you without quite pouring
3. Used of weather that is wet and foggy, where a fine drizzle blurs the landscape and dampens everything

Etymology: "Mizzy" comes from a dialect word for a damp, boggy place. Its ancestor, Middle English "misy," meant "swamp" or "bog," and its origin is uncertain. One possible source is an Old English word, reconstructed as "mȳsiġ," which connects to the Germanic root for "moss." The idea is that a marshy ground was a mossy one, and the same root gave English "mire," which kept the swampy sense and entered the language through Old Norse. The adjective's sense of weather is a step away from the ground itself. Dialect forms such as "mizzick," "mizzack," and "mezzack" suggest the word was once used across parts of England, and some scholars think these may be the same word with a suffix similar to "-ock." Over time, the damp, low-lying air above such bogs became the thing people associated with the term, so a boggy place gave its name to a misty, drizzly day.