fusee

See also: fusée

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfjuːzi/, /fjuːˈziː/
• Rhymes: -uːzi, -iː

Etymology 1

From French fusil, ultimately from Late Latin focus (“fire”).

Alternative forms

• fuzee (archaic)

Noun

fusee (plural fusees)

1. (historical) Synonym of fusil, a light musket or firelock.
   • 1790, Helen Maria Williams, Letters Written in France, Broadview, published 2002, page 123:

     He had not been many days at the chateau, when he perceived, with surprize and consternation, that his steps were continually watched by two servants armed with fusees.

   • 1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 75:

     Breakfast being over, my father took me into his study, where, after fervently recommending me to the care of a protecting providence, he gave me a beautiful fusee, which cost him forty guineas, a pair of pistols of exquisite workmanship, and a purse containing fifty guineas in cash and a twenty-five pounds banknote.

   • 1856, Samuel Klinefelter Hoshour, Letters to Squire Pedant, in the East, page 28:

     After the deperdition of Indagator, having an appetency still further to pervstigate the frithy occident; being still an agamist, and not wishing to be any longer a pedaneous viator, nor to be solivagant, I brought about the emption of a yaud, partly by numismatic mutuation, and partly by a hypothecation of my fusee and argental horologe.

2. (archaic) Synonym of fusilier, a soldier armed with a musket or firelock.

Etymology 2

From French fusée, ultimately from Latin fūsus (“spindle”).

Alternative forms

• fuzee (archaic)

Noun

fusee (plural fusees)

1. (obsolete, chiefly heraldry) Synonym of fusil, a spindle-shaped figure.
2. A conical grooved pulley in early clocks, antique watches, and possibly all non-electronic marine chronometers.
   • 1773, James Cook, The Journals, Second Voyage, 8 August:

     To day when we attended the winding up of the watches the fusee of Mr Arnolds would not turn round and after several unsuccessfull tryals we were obliged to let it go down […] .

3. (archaic) Synonym of fuse, a wick or cord used to ignite gunpowder, bombs, or similar explosives.
4. (farriery) An exostosis applied to a horse's cannon bone.
5. A friction match intended to burn slowly for use with cigars, pipes, etc.

   Synonyms: fuse, fuze, Vesuvian

   • 1914, "Saki", ‘The Dreamer’, Beasts and Superbeasts, Penguin 2000 (Complete Short Stories), page 322:

     A comfortable hammock on a warm afternoon would appeal to his indolent tastes, and then, when he was getting drowsy, a lighted fusee thrown into the nest would bring the wasps out in an indignant mass, and they would soon find a ‘home away from home’ on Waldo's fat body.

7. (US) A colored flare used as a warning on a railroad.

   Hypernyms: flare < signal

Related terms

• fusiform (adjective)

Etymology 3

From fuse + -ee.

Noun

fusee (plural fusees)

1. One who, or that which, fuses or is fused; an individual component of a fusion.
   • 2002, Philosophical Topics, volume 30, number 1, page 276:

     This is the fusion of two people who are neurally and biologically (and so, psychologically) identical. Setting aside issues about intensional content, when these differ, such a fusion would clearly produce someone who is exactly like what either of the fusees would have been like had the fusion not occurred.

Anagrams

• eFuse