12/28/2011
Word Wednesday - Fusty
fusty
\ FUHS-tee \ , adjective;
1.Having a stale smell; moldy; musty.
2.Old-fashioned or out-of-date, as architecture, furnishings, or the like.
3.Stubbornly conservative or old-fashioned; fogyish.
Fusty - Age had formed him into a fusty creature, broken of body and spirit, totally unwilling to entertain even a hint of novelty or humor.
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"The yellow-haired god and his nine fusty maids
ReplyDeleteTo the hill of old Lud will incontinent flee;
Idalia will boast but of tenant-less shades,
And the bi-forked hill a mere desert will be.
My thunder, no fear on't, will soon do its errand,
And, damn me I'll swinge the ringleaders, I warrant
I'll trim the young dogs, for thus daring to twine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine."
Ralph Tomlinson, "To Anacreon in Heaven," c. 1780; sung to the tune familiar these days as "The Star-Spangled Banner."
(English translation to the previous post:
ReplyDeleteJove / Jupiter, upset at the existence of the Anacreontic Society [a late 18th-century London-based men's drinking club named after a classical Greek poet who advocated "wine, women, and song"], darkly predicts that
"the yellow-haired god"[Apollo]
and "his nine fusty maids" [the Muses]
will go on a debauch to "the hill of old Lud" [London]
and that everyone else will forsake the "bi-forked hill" [Mt. Olympus/heaven]
to go carousing after these divine delinquents.
But, by Jove!, he'll fix them -- with his thunderbolts -- "for thus daring to twine/ The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine" [drinking a lot and having a lot of "naughty" fun in London].