fustian
Meanings
Plural: fustians
Noun
- pompous or pretentious talk or writing
- a strong cotton and linen fabric with a slight nap
- Originally, a kind of coarse fabric made from cotton and flax; now, a kind of coarse twilled cotton, or cotton and linen, stuff with a short pile and often dyed a dull colour, which is chiefly prepared for menswear.
- A class of fabric including corduroy and velveteen.
- Inflated, pompous, or pretentious speech or writing; bombast; also (archaic), incoherent or unintelligible speech or writing; gibberish, nonsense.
- Chiefly in rum fustian: a hot drink made of a mixture of alcoholic beverages (as beer, gin, and sherry or white wine) with egg yolk, lemon, and spices.
Adj
- Made out of fustian (noun sense 1).
- Of a person, or their speech or writing: using inflated, pompous, or pretentious language; bombastic; grandiloquent; also (obsolete) using incoherent or unintelligible language.
- Imaginary; invented.
- Useless; worthless.
Origin / Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English fustian (“type of fabric, probably made from cotton, flax, or wool; piece of fustian spread over a bed or mattress”) [and other forms], from Old French fustaine, fustaigne (modern French futaine), from Medieval Latin fūstāneum, from (pannus) fūstāneus or (tela) fūstānea, of disputed origin.
Sense 3 (“inflated, pompous, or pretentious speech or writing”) is possibly from the fact that the fabric was sometimes used to make cushion- and pillowcases, thus suggesting that the speech or writing is “padded” or “stuffed”; compare bombast. The relationship between sense 4 (“hot drink made of a mixture of alcoholic beverages with egg yolk, lemon, and spices”) and the fabric is unclear.
The adjective is from an attributive use of the noun.
Cognates
* Italian fustagno
* Occitan fustani
* Portuguese fustão
* Spanish fustan
Synonyms
aureation, blah, bombard phrase, bombast, circumlocutory, claptrap, diffuse, fustian, grandiloquence, highfalutin, magniloquence, palaverous, periphrastic, pleonastic, prolix, purple prose, rant, rigmarole, sesquipedalian, verbose, wordy
Antonyms
Scrabble Score: 10
fustian is a valid Scrabble (US) TWL wordfustian is a valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
fustian is a valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary