different between musty vs frowsty

English

Etymology

must +? -y.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): [?m?st?]
• Rhymes: -?sti

Adjective

musty (comparative mustier, superlative mustiest)

1. Having a stale odor.

Derived terms

• mustily
• mustiness

Translations

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