[Connected with next vb.; the exact relation of the two words is uncertain.]
1. One who is ‘behind the times,’ a fogy. (See also quot. 1889.)
1860. Thackeray, Round. Papers, Chalk-mark, 115. Have we not almost all learnt these expressions of old foozles: and uttered them ourselves when in the square-toed state?
1889. Barrère & Leland, Slang Dict., Foozle (American), a man who is easily humbugged, a fool.
2. Golf. [from the vb.] A ‘foozling’ stroke.
1890. Hutchinson, Golf (Badm. Libr.), 124. All the turf that ever Jamie Anderson cut away before his iron met the ball was either on the very rare occasions on which he made a foozle, and the probably considerably more frequent ones on which he found himself in a very bad lie.
1891. A. Lang, At the Sign of the Ship, in Longm. Mag., XIX. April, 688. A ‘carry’ of a quarter of a mile would have been a mere ‘foozle’ to him, with his height and leverage.
