daze [ME] Daze was formed from dazed, from Old Norse dasathr ‘weary’. In English the sense ‘benumb with cold’ may have been the earliest, and it is easy to see how this could develop into the senses confused or unable to operate normally. One development was dazed by excess light, which in the late 15th century developed its own form dazzle. In the USA in the late 19th century this developed in turn into razzle-dazzle, giving the new words razzmatazz [L19th] and razzle [E20th] from which very quickly developed the phrase on the razzle.