different between stuffy vs frowsty

English

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?st?fi/
• Rhymes: -?fi

Adjective

stuffy (comparative stuffier, superlative stuffiest)

1. Poorly ventilated; partially plugged.

2. Stout; mettlesome; resolute.
3. (US) Angry and obstinate; sulky.
4. Boring, uninteresting, over-formal, pompous, very conventional.

5. (Scotland) Stout; sturdy.

Derived terms

• stuffily
• stuffiness

Related terms

• stuffed shirt

Translations

Noun

stuffy (plural stuffies)

1. (US, Canada, colloquial, often childish) Synonym of stuffed toy

Alternative forms

• stuffie

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