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fousty
DCHP-2 (Mar 2014)
Spelling variants:fausty
adj. — Newfoundland, dated
mouldy, having a bad smell.
Type: 2. Preservation — The roots of fousty can be traced back to West Country English, the dialects of southwest England (Clarke 2010b: 105), where it was spelled "fusty". "Fusty" derives from "fust", a noun meaning 'a mouldy or bad smell' (OED-3, s.v. "fusty"). Because of the large number of immigrants from the West Country to Newfoundland in the 18th and 19th centuries, the term has remained in the province's lexicon. Fousty appears today on the internet most frequently in Canada, with the UK in second place (see Chart 1).
See also COD-2, s.v. "fousty", which is marked "Cdn (Nfld)", DNE, s.v. "fousty".
See also COD-2, s.v. "fousty", which is marked "Cdn (Nfld)", DNE, s.v. "fousty".
See: smatchy(meaning 1b)
Used often in connection with food items, as the quotations illustrate.
The term is a dialectal English variant of fusty 'smelling stale, damp etc.' that has become institutionalized in Newfoundland and Labrador throughout the 20th century.
Quotations
1886
The spokesman said (and these are the exact words used by him) "the flour we were compelled to eat was sour, [...] the molasses salty, the butter snitchy and the tea fousty."
1904
Note the Bank crash, railway deals, land grants, telegraph concessions, the giving out of hundreds of thousans [sic] of dollars in able-bodied relief, which was placed in the hands of Political Supporters for distribution; men who ground the faces of the poor because they were poor, and when they asked for bread gave them rotten flour, sour molasses, fousty tea, and called pork and oleo butter, luxuries.
1912
In such a way did the people mark their disapproval of the Tory administration of 1885 to 1898 and to-day the memory of that administration lives as the government of the gunny bag, fousty meal and sour molasses.
1977
It is Mr. Guy's book "YOU MAY KNOW THEM AS SEA URCHINS" that has sold the most copy's thus far, numbering over 29,000. "A master of a kind of writing that can best be described as ironic reminiscence", wrote Patrick O'Flaherty. Not to speak of the fousty smell he can create when writing of politicians, rats and other such things.
1986
If a finger got infected and a poultice wouldn't work they might use a piece of fousty or moldy bread, or -- as a last resort -- a finger stall with a few dozen newly-hatched fishfly maggots inside. The latter would feed on the pus and proud flesh until the wound was pink and clean.
1994
When Joey Smallwood was on the Confederation campaign trail, he won many voters with the slogan, "No more fousty brown bread!" Always a foxy politician, he was playing on emotions aroused twenty years earlier by an unpopular program of the Commission of Government that saved hundreds of outport fishermen and their families from a debilitating disease.
References
- COD-2
- Clarke (2010b)
- DNE
- OED-3
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