different between fusty vs frowsty

English

Alternative forms

• foosty (Scots)

Etymology

From Old French fust (“wood”) (modern French fût), from Latin fustis (“a cudgel”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /f?sti/
• Rhymes: -?sti

Adjective

fusty (comparative fustier, superlative fustiest)

1. Moldy or musty.
2. Stale-smelling or stuffy.
3. (figuratively, by extension) Old-fashioned, refusing to change or update.
4. (of wine) Tasting of the cask.

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:fusty.

Derived terms

• fustily
• fustiness

Translations

Anagrams

• yufts

English

Adjective

frowsty (comparative frowstier, superlative frowstiest)

1. (Britain) musty; stuffy (atmosphere)
   • 1918, Siegried Sassoon, "A Working Party" in The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, New York: Dutton & Co., lines 41-44, [1]

     He thought of getting back by half-past twelve, / And tot of rum to send him warm to sleep / In draughty dug-out frowsty with the fumes / Of coke, and full of snoring weary men.

   • 1933, H. G. Wells, The Shape of Things to Come, Book 4, Chapter 5, [2]

     Man, he says, was still "frowsty-minded" and "half asleep" in the early twenty-first century, still in urgent danger of a relapse into the confused nightmare living of the Age of Frustration.

   • 1950, C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Collins, 1998, Chapter 10,

     So Mrs. Beaver and the children came bundling out of the cave, all blinking in the daylight, and with earth all over them, and looking very frowsty and unbrushed and uncombed and with the sleep in their eyes.

Translations