FIZZLE. Halliwell says: "The half-hiss, half-sigh of an animal." In many colleges in the United States, this word is applied to a bad recitation, probably from the want of distinct articulation which usually attends such performances. It is further explained in the Yale Banger, November 10, 1846: "This figure of a wounded snake is intended to represent what in technical language is termed a fizzle. The best judges have decided, that to get just one third of the meaning right constitutes a perfect fizzle."
With a mind and body so nearly at rest, that naught interrupted my inmost repose save cloudy reminiscences of a morning "fizzle" and an afternoon "flunk," my tranquillity was sufficiently enviable.—Yale Lit. Mag., Vol. XV. p. 114.
Here he could fizzles mark without a sigh,
And see orations unregarded die.
The Tomahawk, Nov., 1849.
Not a wail was heard, or a "fizzle's" mild sigh,
As his corpse o'er the pavement we hurried.
The Gallinipper, Dec., 1849.
At Princeton College, the word blue is used with fizzle, to render it intensive; as, he made a blue fizzle, he fizzled blue.
FIZZLE. To fail in reciting; to recite badly. A correspondent from Williams College says: "Flunk is the common word when some unfortunate man makes an utter failure in recitation. He fizzles when he stumbles through at last." Another from Union writes: "If you have been lazy, you will probably fizzle." A writer in the Yale Literary Magazine thus humorously defines this word: "Fizzle. To rise with modest reluctance, to hesitate often, to decline finally; generally, to misunderstand the question."—Vol. XIV. p. 144.
My dignity is outraged at beholding those who fizzle and flunk in my presence tower above me.—The Yale Banger, Oct. 22, 1847.
I "skinned," and "fizzled" through.
Presentation Day Songs, June 14, 1854.
The verb to fizzle out, which is used at the West, has a little stronger signification, viz. to be quenched, extinguished; to prove a failure.—Bartlett's Dict. Americanisms.
The factious and revolutionary action of the fifteen has interrupted the regular business of the Senate, disgraced the actors, and fizzled out.—Cincinnati Gazette.