Eggcorn Forum

English has two similar and equally legitimate words, “frizzle” and “frazzle.” Sometimes the two get together, as in the phrase “frizzle frazzle.” *

“To frizzle,” like the verb “to frizz,” means to produce short, crisp curls in someone’s hair. The origin of the verb “frizzle” is obscure, but it was solidly in place by the sixteenth century. Later, perhaps in the early nineteenth century, “frizzle” gained a new meaning: to fry or broil, especially in a way that makes a sputtering noise. This second meaning of “frizzle” may have had nothing to do with the earlier meaning-it is perhaps an onomatopoetic version of “fry.” My interest in the word picks up when the noun derived from this second meaning of “frizzle” becomes ensconced in the idiom “to burn to a frizzle.”

The noun “frazzle” entered English in the middle of the nineteenth century. It is derived from the verb “to frazzle,” which preceded it by a few years. The verb refers to the unravelling of cloth or rope ends-fraying, in other words. The noun quickly confined itself to an idiom, “to a frazzle.” Something “worn to a frazzle” is overused to the point of fraying.

As we might expect, these two idioms, “to a frizzle” and “to a frazzle,” tend to get confused. A gemara tells us that Shimon ben Jochai gained laser vision after hiding out for twelve years in a cave. He found, says one commentator, that “whatever or whomever he looked at…was burned to a frazzle.” (http://www.ou.org/torah/haber/vayikra48.htm) The Rabbi has lots of company in his confusion-some fifty other web pages use the phrase “burned to a frazzle.” A switch in the other direction also happens, though not so frequently. A blogger complains “I was so worn to a frizzle that making a sandwich seemed like summiting Mount Everest.” (http://redstapler23.blogspot.com/2007/06/obvious.html)

Either switch could arguably be an eggcorn. “Burned to a frazzle” is especially evocative. Burned cloth (natural fiber, not the polyester stuff) tends to show fraying where it is burned. But “worn to a frizzle,” working so hard that we end up feeling like an overfried steak, also makes some sense.

• “Frizzle frazzle” seems to have no fixed meaning. It can be used in the sense of “cool,” or in the sense of “razzle dazzle,” or it can even, says the online Urban Dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p … le+Frazzle), denote a bout of vigorous sex.