Haze
/heɪz/noun
A thin fog or mist that reduces visibility.
Did you know?The word’s earliest ancestor was about color, not weather: it likely began as a Germanic term for a dull gray-brown shade before narrowing in English to misty, obscuring air.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Germanic
PGmc
*haswaz
“gray, dusky, brownish”
Old English
OE
hasu
“gray, brown, dusky”
Middle English
ME
hasen / hazen
“to become hazy; to be dim or obscure”
15th–16th Century
English
haze
“a dimness in the air; mist or obscurity”
Modern English
English
haze
“a thin mist or atmospheric obscurity”