Word of the Day

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4

Fusty

[fəs-tee]Part of speech: adjective

Origin: french, late 15th century

• Smelling stale, damp, or stuffy.
• Old-fashioned in attitude or style.

Examples of Fusty in a sentence

• Please open the windows in your room, because it's starting to smell fusty.
• The substitute teacher has a fusty reputation.

About Fusty

Aged wine is certainly desirable, but fusty has also come to mean anything old-fashioned, tired, and stale. The original aged meaning holds, but the additional connotation can apply literally to old and moldy food, and also figuratively in the personality department.

Did you Know?

Fusty might sound like a word made up to serve as a rhyme of dusty, but it has an enological (relating to wine) origin. The Old French word "fuste" means smelling of the cask. So if you've ever been in a wine cellar and smelled the particular aroma of aging wine, that's fusty.

Comments

[pfrye.livejournal.com]

Illya Kuryakin was beyond tired. He managed to balance his Chinese takeout in one arm, and get his apartment key with the other hand. Opening his door he turned off his alarm system and stepped into his fusty apartment. He pushed his suitcase in with his foot and reset his alarm.

Toeing off one shoe he hobbled over to his couch, set his dinner on his crowded coffee table, shrugged out of his jacket and wandered into the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of vodka from his freezer. He slipped his shoulder holster off and tossed it next to himself as he plopped down on his couch.

He took a swig of his vodka, straight from the bottle, leaned back and shut his eyes. That is how Napoleon found him later that evening. Asleep, one shoe off, toe poking out of a hole in his sock, cold take out in cartons on the coffee table, a bottle of vodka balanced against his thigh. His head leaned back against the couch, snoring quietly.