fusee

See also: fusée

English

Etymology 1

From French fusée, ultimately from Latin fūsus (spindle).

Noun

fusee (plural fusees)

  1. A conical, grooved pulley in early clocks.
  2. A large friction match.
    • 1914, "Saki", ‘The Dreamer’, Beasts and Superbeasts, Penguin 2000 (Complete Short Stories), page 322:
      A comfortable hammock on a warm afternoon would appeal to his indolent tastes, and then, when he was getting drowsy, a lighted fusee thrown into the nest would bring the wasps out in an indignant mass, and they would soon find a ‘home away from home’ on Waldo's fat body.
  3. A fuse for an explosive.
  4. (US) A colored flare used as a warning on the railroad.
  5. A fusil, or flintlock musket.

Etymology 2

Uncertain.

Noun

fusee (plural fusees)

  1. The track of a buck.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Ainsworth to this entry?)

Etymology 3

fuse + -ee.

Noun

fusee (plural fusees)

  1. One who, or that which, fuses or is fused; an individual component of a fusion.
    • 2002, Philosophical Topics, volume 30, issue 1, page 276:
      This is the fusion of two people who are neurally and biologically (and so, psychologically) identical. Setting aside issues about intensional content, when these differ, such a fusion would clearly produce someone who is exactly like what either of the fusees would have been like had the fusion not occurred.
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