fustian

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   inflated, pompous, or pretentious speech or writing

   The critic dismissed the speech as ten pages of patriotic fustian.

2. 2
   noun

   a strong, coarse twilled fabric, traditionally made from cotton and linen

   The workman's jacket was cut from hard-wearing fustian.

3. 3
   adj

   using pompous or pretentious language; bombastic

   The novel's fustian declarations weakened an otherwise restrained scene.

The fabric name came through Old French fustaine from Medieval Latin fustaneum, of disputed deeper origin. The figurative sense for pompous writing may compare padded or 'stuffed' language to the cloth once used in cushions, much as bombast shifted from cotton stuffing to inflated rhetoric.

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