Fashionable Words: Doozy

[Sometimes words die out of fashion. But sometimes those words are good words, words with a certain appeal that can't be denied forever. Those words should be brought back into fashion, used frequently and used often. These are those words.]


Word:
Doozy


Definition:   noun (and adjective)
Something outstanding, remarkable, amazing, unique.


Origin:
Most likely a 20th-century creation, there's actually no concrete history as to where doozy comes from, although the OED suggests an old slang variant of the word daisy is the origin.

You're probably thinking flowers right now. Don't. Or maybe you're thinking of the female name, like Daisy Buchanan. Nah. While daisies are lovely flowers and Ms. Buchanan was a charming person when not mowing down innocent people in the road, the slang daisy didn't have to do with either flowers or female names. (Although Daisy Buchanan plowing over Myrtle in a speeding car was a bit of a doozy.)

The hydrangeaist!

Instead, daisy (as the classy doozy) meant something was first rate, top-notch, fantastic, etc., and first appeared in text in 1757. Its first appearance in something noteworthy came in 1886 when it popped up in the old children's novel Little Lord Fauntleroy, in the sentence "She's the daisiest gal I ever saw!" Admittedly, "She's the hydrangeaist girl I ever saw!" doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well.

Doozy finally appeared in its own right in 1903, when it popped up in a book called Slang Fables from Afar by Al Kleberg. Kleberg, who is otherwise unnoteworthy, also holds the distinction of first citing batty (as in crazy) in a text.

Al Kleberg, the unknown Shakespeare of his time.



Most obscure UrbanDictionary.com definitions of doozy:
(verbatim)

4.  Something that is better than everything else. Also, a famous Runescape player who is one of the best in that game.

5.  A delicious drink in a can or bottle

The doozy card.

10.  someone that mean anything, a word that can be used anywhere at anytime, like how in uno you have a wild card that can be any color well DOOZY is a wild word it can mean anything.

11.  A night filled with excessive drinking to the point that events of the said night are hazy and cannot be completely recalled. There are varying degrees of "doozy", the most common being a night filled with drunken hilarity that for the most part is only recalled by those who did not get too drunk, or partake in the "doozy". A person who has a doozy usually wakes up the next morning wondering where he/she is, often times confused about the events of the night before.







Used in a sentence:

Better watch out--this snowstorm is going to be a doozy!


Why you should use doozy in your everyday life:

Makes you sound like an innocent seven-year old who just inherited an English estate.


Word Awesomeness Scale (1-to-5):

Three.

Could be mistaken as the name of Snow White's long lost dwarf.