Fustian

Quick meaning: Fustian is a noun meaning A class of fabric including corduroy and velveteen.

Meaning

A class of fabric including corduroy and velveteen.

More Meanings

1. Made out of fustian (noun sense 1).
2. Imaginary; invented.
3. Useless; worthless.
4. 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.
5. (figuratively) Inflated, pompous, or pretentious speech or writing; bombast; also (archaic), incoherent or unintelligible speech or writing; gibberish, nonsense.
6. (alcoholic beverages, archaic) 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.
7. Of a person, or their speech or writing: using inflated, pompous, or pretentious language; bombastic; grandiloquent; also (obsolete) using incoherent or unintelligible language.

Example Sentences

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.

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.'

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.

Word Forms

• fustians

Synonyms for fustian

Depending on context, synonyms include aureation, bombast, grandiloquence, highfalutin, magniloquence, circumlocutory.

Antonyms for fustian

Common opposites include brief, concise, crisp, laconic, lapidary, short-winded.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include bombast, rant, blah, claptrap, heretofore, fust.

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