Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
faze, fease, feeze (vv.), phase (n., v.)
Faze, fease, and feeze are variant spellings and represent variant pronunciations of the same verb, which means “disturb, upset, embarrass.” Faze is the most commonly used spelling today, and the verb is most frequently used in the negative: Her outburst didn’t seem to faze him at all. Phase is a quite separate noun, whose most frequent meaning is “a stage or form in a series of cyclic changes in something”: Two-year-old children are in a difficult phase. The related verb means “to do things by stages” or “to put things in phase order,” and it combines with in or out. We phased the plan in [out] gradually.
