Etymology: Fusty

As this past week has been uneventful, I thought I'd do my fallback of looking at the etymology of a word.

The word for the day (week? month?) is fusty.  It's one of those words I came across a long time ago (I don't remember where), and I keep those in a file and just add on as I stumble upon more words I find interesting.

'Fusty' (also with the forms of 'fustier' and 'fustiest') is an adjective.  As defined by Dictionary.com:

         1) having a stale smell; moldy; dusty
         2) old-fashioned or out-of-date, as architecture, furnishings, or the like
         3) stubbornly conservative or old-fashioned; fogyish

(Fogyish is a bit of a fun word, too)

Its origins start in Latin, fustis, meaning staff or stick of wood.  Then, in Old French, you get fuist or fuste, meaning wine cask (which were made of wood).  In the late fourteenth century in France, the word fusté comes into play, which means 'tasting of the cork'.  As the wood would take on the smell of the wine, the word 'fusty' came to refer to the stale smell of the wine-scented wood.  Full circle back to the Latin!

It doesn't take too much imagination to see where the references to something (or someone) being out-of-date comes from there, does it? 😊