fustian
Part of speech: noun
adj
Morphological type: simple
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
Inflected forms:
form: fustians
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: more fustian
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most fustian
pos: adj
tags: superlative
Senses:
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
usually
examples: VVWhere's the Cooke, is ſupper ready, the houſe trim'd, ruſhes ſtrevv'd, cobvvebs ſvvept, the ſeruingmen in their nevv fuſtian, their vvhite ſtockings, and euery officer his vvedding garment on?
Fustian, of which I found only one entry before 1401, occurs frequently in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It appears to have been a ribbed cloth. […] On one occasion (1443) it is described as 'white ribbed fustian.'
His clothes were of fustian, and his boots hobnailed, yet in his progress he showed not the mud-accustomed bearing of hobnailed and fustained peasantry.
The different names given to fustian cloths depend upon their degree of fineness, and the manner in which they are woven and finished. […] In all fustians there is a warp and filling, or weft thread, independent of the additional filling-thread forming the pile; but in corduroys the pile thread is only 'thrown in' where the corded portions are and is absent in the narrow spaces between.
The East India company was pursuing its own financial interests, but in doing so was also fostering the establishment of industries such as calico printing — an industry that would have not achieved the same degree of accomplishment if it had confined itself simply to the printing of European fustians (mixed cottons) and linens, both of which were more difficult to print on than cotton.
gloss: A class of fabric including corduroy and velveteen.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
usually
examples: Fustian is a species of coarse twilled cotton, but may be considered as a general term which comprehends several varieties of cotton fabrics, as corduroy, jean, velveret, velveteen, thickset, thickset cord, and other stout cloths for men's wearing apparel; from their strength and cheapness, they are very serviceable to agricultural people. It is generally dyed of an olive, leaden, or other colours. […] Fustians are either plain or twilled.
Fustian originally referred to a large variety of textiles of linen-and-cotton blend; later it came to mean all-cotton textiles. Common varieties of the fancy fustians are corduroy, jean, pillow, thickset, velveret and velveteen.
Fustians, a large group of general-purpose fabrics were mainly woven with a tight heavy texture. Sometimes they were plainly woven, but fustians could also be fashioned with “tufts” creating fabric like corduroy or velveteen. Fustians were used for anything from draperies to dresses or upholstery to men’s waistcoats.
In the nineteenth century fustian cutting was a major occupation right across the North West and thousands of people in the cotton towns were employed at it. Sometimes the work was done at tables but more often than not the cloth was stretched across rollers and they'd walk up and down all day, slicing through the threads of the weave row by row, using tiny blades fashioned from watch springs and honed until they were as sharp as razorblades. Cutting even a basic fustian, they could walk ten or eleven miles over the length of a shift. With more sophisticated fustians – fabrics like velveteen, for instance – you had to walk further, much further.
gloss: Inflated, pompous, or pretentious speech or writing; bombast; also (archaic), incoherent or unintelligible speech or writing; gibberish, nonsense.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
uncountable
usually
examples: Wag[ner]. Vilaine, call me Maiſter Wagner, and let thy left eye be diametarily fixt vpon my right heele, with quaſi veſtigias nostras inſistere [as if to follow in our footsteps]. / Clo[wn]: God forgiue me, he ſpeakes Dutch fuſtian: / well, Ile folow him, Ile ſerue him, thats flat.
Monſieur Orenge, yond' Gallants obſerues vs; pr'y thee let's talke Fuſtian a little and gull 'hem: make 'hem beleeue vve are great Schollers.
If hee can havvke & hunt, ride a horſe, play at cards and dice, ſvvagger, drinke, ſvveare, take Tobacco vvith a grace, ſing, dance, vveare his cloathes in faſhion, court and pleaſe his miſtris, talke bigge fuſtian, inſult, ſcorne, contemne others and vſe a litle mimicall and apiſh complement aboue the reſt, he is a compleat, (Egregiam verò laudem) a vvell-qualified Gentleman, theſe are moſt of their imployments, this their greateſt cõmendation.
I am much deceiv'd if this be not abominable fuſtian, that is, thoughts and vvords ill ſorted, and vvithout the leaſt relation to each other: […]
Nothing that belongs to Homer ſeems to have been more commonly miſtaken than the juſt Pitch of his Style: Some of his Tranſlators having ſvvell'd into Fuſtian in a proud Confidence of the Sublime; others ſunk into Flatneſs in a cold and timorous Notion of Simplicity.
Claudian in the deſcription of his infant Titan deſcants on this glory about his head, but has run his deſcription into moſt wretched fustian.
And he, vvhoſe Fuſtian’s ſo ſublimely bad, / It is not Poetry, but Proſe run mad: […]
Every preparative of pomp, attitude, and lofty language were called in to make him [John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute] worthy of himself. His admirers were in ecstasies; the few that dared to sneer at his theatric fustian, did not find it quite so ridiculous as they wished.
Sensible Englishmen, like Endymion and Trenchard, looked upon the whole exhibition as fustian, and received the revelations with a smile of frigid courtesy.
What made [Édouard] Manet a veritable prophet in his day, was that he brought a simple formula to a period in which the official art was merely fustian and conventionality.
Anything grandiose or historically based tends to sound flat and banal when it reaches English, partly because translators get stuck between contradictory imperatives: juggling fidelity to the original sense with what is vocally viable, they tend to resort to a genteel fustian which lacks either poetic resonance or demotic realism, adding to a sense of artificiality rather than enhancing credibility.
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
uncountable
usually
examples: RUMFUSTIAN. The yolks of twelve eggs, one quart of strong beer, one bottle of white wine, half a pint of gin, a grated nutmeg, the juice from the peeling of a lemon, a small quantity of cinnamon, and sufficient sugar to sweeten it;[…]
Rum Fustian is a "night-cap" made precisely in the same way as the preceding [egg-posset or egg-flip], with the yolks of twelve eggs, a quart of strong home-brewed beer, a bottle of white wine, half-a-pint of gin, a grated nutmeg, the juice from the peel of a lemon, a small quantity of cinnamon, and sugar sufficient to sweeten it.
Rum fustian [i]s prepared at Oxford as follows: whisk up to a froth the yolks of six eggs and add them to a pint of gin and a quart of strong beer; boil up a bottle of sherry in a sauce-pan, with a stick of cinnamon or nutmeg grated, a dozen large lumps of sugar, and the rind of a lemon peeled very thin; when the wine boils, it is poured upon the beer and gin and drank hot.
gloss: Made out of fustian (noun sense 1).
pos: adj
examples: I was never ſo ſplenetique, when I was moſt dumpiſh, but I could ſmile at a friſe jeſt, when the good man would be pleaſurable, and laugh at fuſtion earneſt, when the merry man would be ſurly.
For my clothes being but a threed-bare fuſtian caſe vvere ſo meane (my cloake onely excepted) that the Boores could not haue made an ordinary ſupper vvith the mony for vvᶜʰ they ſhould haue ſold them; […]
About a fortnight since, as I was diverting myself with a pennyworth of walnuts at the Temple-gate, a lively young fellow in a fustian jacket shot by me, beckoned a coach, and told the coachman he wanted to go as far as Chelsea.
[F]or all my bit of a fuſtian frock, that coſt me in all but forty ſhillings, I believe, betvveen you and me, knight, I have more duſt in my fob, than all theſe povvdered ſparks put together.
He was soon at ease with his honest host, whose manners were quite simple and cordial, and who looked and seemed perfectly a gentleman, though he wore a plain fustian coat, and a waistcoat without a particle of lace.
[S]he was conscious of a rough coffin passing her shoulder, borne by four men. It was open, and in it lay the body of a young man, wearing the smockfrock of a rustic, and fustian breeches.
His fustian shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets.
Her husband was trying to calm her down, assuage her, and in the end what she did was to put a handkerchief over her face and secure it with the brim of a fustian hat.
gloss: Of a person, or their speech or writing: using inflated, pompous, or pretentious language; bombastic; grandiloquent; also (obsolete) using incoherent or unintelligible language.
pos: adj
examples: Monélle, a roguiſh or fustian word, a word in pedlers French, ſignifying wenches, ſtrumpets or whores.
Svb[tle]. VVhy, you muſt entertaine him. Fac[e]. VVhat'll you doe / VVith theſe the vvhile? Svb. VVhy, haue 'hem vp, and ſhew 'hem / Some Fuſtian Booke, or the Darke Glaſſe.
VVherein by the way let me pray thee to obſerue that I haue alſo inſerted […] euen of the fuſtian termes, vſed by too many vvho ſtudy rather to bee heard ſpeake, than to vnderſtand themſelues.
And why wou'dſt thou theſe mightly Morſels chuſe, / Of Words unchaw'd, and fit to choak the Muſe? / Let Fuſtian Poets with their Stuff be gone, / And ſuck the Miſts that hang o're Helicon; […]
[Alexander] Pope, after censuring the haste, negligence, and fustian language of [George] Chapman, observes "that which is to be allowed him, and which very much contributed to cover his defects, is a free daring spirit that animates his translation, which is something like what one might imagine Homer himself would have written before he arrived at years of discretion."
gloss: Imaginary; invented.
pos: adj
tags: obsolete
examples: [T]he Scene, Gargaphie: vvhich I doe vehemently ſuſpect for ſome fuſtian countrie, but let that vaniſh.
gloss: Useless; worthless.
pos: adj
tags: obsolete
examples: Hard to make ought of that is nakid nought; / This fustiane maistres and this giggisse gase, / Wonder is to wryte what wrenchis she wrowght, / To face out her foly with a midsomer mase; […]
For Gods ſake thruſt him down ſtaires, I cannot indure ſuch a fuſtian raſcall.
Synonyms: aureation
bombard phrase
bombast
fustian
grandiloquence
highfalutin
magniloquence
purple prose
Related words: nonsense
Derived words: fustianed
fustianism
fustianist
fustianize
Translations: