Fustian

Origin

Middle English fustian, from Old French fustaine, from Medieval Latin fustaneum, probably from Latin fustis ("club; (medieval use) tree trunk").

Full definition of fustian

Noun

1. A kind of coarse twilled cotton or cotton and linen stuff.
• 1882, James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, Fustian, of which I have found only one entry before 1401, occurs frequently in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It appears to have been a ribbed cloth.
2. A class of cloth including corduroy and velveteen.
3. Pompous, inflated or pretentious writing or speech.
• AddisonClaudius ... has run his description into the most wretched fustian.
• 1 March 2014, Rupert Christiansen, English translations rarely sing, 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.

Usage notes

Used in the sense of "pompous" since at least the time of . For this shift of meaning, compare bombast.