[f. BUZZ v.1 + -ING1.] The action of the verb BUZZ.
1. A sibilant humming.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVIII. xii. (1495), 768. Tyll one bee wake them all with twyes bussyng or thryes.
c. 1540. Pilgrym’s Tale, 66, in Thynne’s Animadv. (1865), 79. I herde a bussinge … I thought yt had beyn the dran be.
1657. S. Purchas, Pol. Flying-Ins., I. v. 12. Two or three loud buzzings.
1865. Blackmore, Maid of Sker, xxvi. 155. He had … a kind of a buzzing in one ear.
1869. Ruskin, Q. of Air, § 35. The buzzing of the fly [is] produced … by a constant current of air through the trachea.
2. Confused or mingled utterance; busy murmuring, muttering; murmur, busy talk, rumor.
1532. More, Confut. Tindale, Wks. (1557), 408/2. The … obseruaunces of the churche, which he calleth … howling, buzsing, and crying oute.
1613. Shaks., Hen. VIII., II. i. 148. Did you not of late dayes heare A buzzing of a Separation Betweene the King and Katherine?
1827. Carlyle, Libussa, Transl. (1874), 94. The hum of the multitude, the whispering and buzzing.
1882. H. C. Merivale, Faucit of B., II. II. i. 151. The buzzings of the Agnostics.
