faze

 
Pronunciation: /feɪz/

verb

[with object] informal
  • disturb or disconcert (someone): she was not fazed by his show of anger

Origin:

mid 19th century (originally US): variant of dialect feeze 'drive or frighten off', from Old English fēsian, of unknown origin

Faze has no connection with the word phase and should not be spelled with a ph-, although this is a common error: almost a quarter of citations for the word in the Oxford English Corpus are for the incorrect spelling.

Faze means ‘to disconcert or disturb’ and is used informally in mainly negative contexts: the prospect of going on stage for forty minutes does not seem to have fazed her. In origin it is a 19th-century American English variant of the ancient verb feeze ‘to drive off, to frighten away’ and has nothing to do with the ordinary verb phase. The spelling phase is now quite common, but it should be avoided in writing.