buzzy

English

Etymology

From buzz +‎ -y.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbʌzi/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌzi
• Homophone: buzzie

Adjective

buzzy (comparative buzzier, superlative buzziest)

1. Having a buzzing sound.
   • 1988 March 11, Kyle Gann, “Music Notes: Nicolas Collins plays the radio”, in Chicago Reader‎^[1]:

     Collins shifts the slide, and the trumpet phrase gets faster and faster until it blurs into a buzzy pitch.

2. (informal) Being the subject of cultural buzz.
   • 2007 January 21, Richard Siklos, “Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking”, in New York Times‎^[2]:

     This time, my host asked me if I was part of LinkedIn, a buzzy Web site intended to link people with similar business interests.

   • 2021 January 22, Lilah Raptopoulos, “My tug-of-war with algorithms”, in Financial Times‎^[3]:

     One afternoon in June, I was out with a stranger at my local park. The algorithms recommended we meet. He told me he had been reading How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, a buzzy bestseller by Jenny Odell.

   • 2021 July 25, Claire Armitstead, “Jeanette Winterson: ‘The male push is to discard the planet: all the boys are going off into space’”, in The Guardian‎^[4]:

     These public artworks only arrived a few weeks ago, Winterson explains, as part of a grand plan to pedestrianise the area, and make it more buzzy, just at the moment that the sort of well-heeled office workers who bought upmarket chocolates are abandoning it owing to the Covid pandemic.

   • 2022 April 14, Delia Cai, “Severance, the New York Times’s Twitter Guidelines, and the Forever Illusion of Work-Life Balance”, in Vanity Fair‎^[5]:

     For media workers, especially those at the start of their careers, it quite literally pays to be visible and visibly liked on Twitter, and posting about your dog alongside analyses of the supply chain, or perhaps a buzzy TV show, is a reliable way to achieve likability, whether you’re conscious of it or not.

3. (informal) Using a large number of buzzwords.
   • 2021, Pamela Haag, Revise: The Scholar-Writer’s Essential Guide to Tweaking, Editing, and Perfecting Your Manuscript:

     The author is using some buzzy language—derived from prevailing theories in his discipline—that, when replicated throughout the manuscript, prompted a reader to worry that the work, while sensitive and brilliant, was jargon-y and dense.

Derived terms

• buzzily
• buzziness