Literary notes about fustian (AI summary)
"Fustian" appears in literature both as a concrete term for a coarse, sturdy fabric and as a metaphor for bombastic or insubstantial language. Authors describe characters wearing fustian garments to evoke common, rough-hewn qualities—as in plain fustian coats, trousers, or skirts that emphasize their working-class nature ([1], [2], [3])—while simultaneously using the word to suggest empty, pompous discourse, as when lengthy, inflated rhetoric is dismissed as naught but "a hundred pages of fustian" ([4]) or criticized as “silly fustian about patriotism” ([5]). In other contexts, fustian is noted in functional settings—such as the invention of a linen (fustian) bag for brewing coffee ([6], [7])—highlighting its practical as well as metaphorical weight within the narrative.
- He was dressed like a respectable countryman, with a good plain fustian coat upon his back, and leathern gaiters on his legs.
— from A Whim, and Its ConsequencesCollection of British Authors Vol. CXIV by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James - He had small twinkling eyes, and a pock-marked face; wore a fur cap, a dark corduroy jacket, greasy fustian trousers, and an apron.
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - He wore a brown holland suit in summer, in colder weather a fustian one of like colour, and at first glance you might mistake him for a Quaker.
— from Poison Island by Arthur Quiller-Couch - The line is worth a hundred pages of fustian.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - " "You give me up, for the sake of a whim, of some silly fustian about patriotism, some fool's rubbish of high-sounding words!
— from Philip WinwoodA Sketch of the Domestic History of an American Captain in the War of Independence; Embracing Events that Occurred between and during the Years 1763 and 1786, in New York and London: written by His Enemy in War, Herbert Russell, Lieutenant in the Loyalist Forces. by Robert Neilson Stephens - This same year a novelty was introduced in France in the shape of a fustian (linen) bag for infusing ground coffee.
— from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers - It came in the form of a fustian (cloth) bag which contained the ground coffee in the coffee maker, and the boiling water was poured over it.
— from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers
