Mizzle and drizzle

Mizzle is a dialect word for drizzle.

Where and how often is it used?

Please read the sentence I have found:

There's mizzling and there's drizzle.

As far as I know, mizzle and drizzle mean the same thing - a misty rain. But in the sentence above the two concepts are somehow contrasted. Does the sentence make sense to you? Do you feel any difference between drizzle and mizzle?

Solution 1:

According to Weather Online, it is used in some places in the UK:

Mizzle is a term used in Devon and Cornwall for a combination of fine drenching drizzle or extremely fine rain and thick, heavy saturating mist or fog.

(It may be used elsewhere; dictionaries such as the OED mark it as "regional (Brit. and N. Amer.)" but don't mention any specifics.)

The OED puts it in Frequency Band 2, which means the word occurs "fewer than 0.01 times per million words in typical modern English usage".

Solution 2:

'Mizzle' is not, exactly, the same as 'drizzle'. As the word implies, it is mist that is lightly precipitating into droplets, but the droplets are small enough to remain airborne and do not fall as drizzle.

The progression is seen in a reference quote in the OED :

1806 J. Beresford Miseries Human Life I. vi. 111 A mist, which successively becomes a mizzle, a drizzle, a shower, a rain, a torrent

The Urban Dictionary confirms this :

A Devonshire word describing weather that is more than mist but not quite drizzle. Annoying weather that on the surface doesn't deserve a brollie or jacket but after 30minutes you are soaked

The word is current, neither archaic nor pure dialect :

It wasn’t a surprise to the weather pessimists among us that the one day you need clear, calm weather to go and enjoy 85km around the Yorkshire Dales, you get the tail end of a tropical storm, with all-day mizzle and winds.

SingleTrackWorld - August 20, 2018.

Solution 3:

Nearly all dictionaries I've checked don't make a distinction between the two with the exception of one, maybe two. In one case the distinction only exists in the noun definition but is lost in the verb definition. Three of the dictionaries list "mizzle" as (dialectal/regional).

American Heritage Dictionary
Drizzle:
A fine, gentle, misty rain.
Mizzle:
A mistlike rain; a drizzle.

Collins English Dictionary
Drizzle:
(Physical Geography) very light rain, specifically consisting of droplets less than 0.5 mm in diameter
Mizzle:
(Physical Geography) a dialect word for drizzle

Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Drizzle:
1.a fine misty rain
Mizzle:
to rain in very fine drops : drizzle

Oxford Living Dictionaries
Drizzle:
1.(mass noun) Light rain falling in very fine drops.
Mizzle:
(mass noun)(dialect) Light rain; drizzle.

Cambridge Dictionary
Drizzle:
rain in very small, light drops
Mizzle:
rain made of many very small drops

Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary
Drizzle:
a very light rain.
Mizzle:
a misty drizzle. (Differs with inclusion of adjective "misty", however the distinction is lost in the verb definition)

Wiktionary.org
Drizzle:
Light rain.
Mizzle:
misty rain or drizzle (Note for verb: "now regional, Britain, Canada, US")

Also the Wikipedia search term "mizzle" redirects to the "drizzle" article. It's possible that in some regions "mizzle" may mean mistier variant of "drizzle", but this difference isn't really reflected in the dictionaries. However there's a good reason to believe that "mizzle" is a regional/dialectal version of "drizzle".