How to Use fusty in a Sentence

fusty

adjective
  • The trunk was full of fusty clothing.
  • Little girls in fusty dresses tend to a fleet of baby dolls.
    — Literary Hub, 11 Dec. 2025
  • The steel frame is easy to wipe down, and the open design keeps it from trapping fusty odors.
    — Audrey Lee, Architectural Digest, 4 Mar. 2025
  • There was the peculiar name, which conjured visions of a fusty baron.
    — Daniel Miller, Los Angeles Times, 27 Mar. 2024
  • Laugh-track shows were coming to seem not just condescending but also stiff and fusty.
    — Jacob Stern, The Atlantic, 15 Apr. 2024
  • These days, however, a fresh breeze is billowing through golf’s fusty clubhouse.
    — New York Times, 1 July 2021
  • So is the broader question of whether the street can shake off its image as a fusty redoubt of old-school haberdashery.
    — David Segal, New York Times, 15 Nov. 2020
  • Heimann avoided cardigans with fusty suede elbow patches or hefty yarn that can invoke infirm geriatrics.
    — Valli Herman, Los Angeles Times, 17 Dec. 2024
  • Because a bit more quirkiness might not be all bad for this staid, tradition-laden, and wonderfully fusty old game.
    — John Guaspari, National Review, 26 Sep. 2021
  • Of course, the news out of Facebook and Meta and recent days has been all about the fusty, 18-year-old legacy app.
    — Andy Meek, BGR, 31 July 2022
  • For many, the bidet remains a fusty porcelain basin vaguely associated with the French.
    — Michael J. Coren, Anchorage Daily News, 5 Apr. 2023
  • But dismissing it as fusty would be an unfortunate act of self-deprivation.
    — Rachel Howard, San Francisco Chronicle, 11 Apr. 2026
  • In the years since its midcentury heyday, flambéing, the art of setting alcohol on fire, has come to be thought of as a fusty gimmick.
    — Melissa Clark, New York Times, 6 Feb. 2023
  • But there’s more to the allusion than the usual fusty Hollywood nostalgia.
    — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 14 Sep. 2023
  • The smell of fusty paper, damp cover binding, obliterated the stink of fast food and electricity.
    — Andrew Liptak, The Verge, 31 Mar. 2018
  • Like so much about the fusty Senate, even the beverage exceptions are rooted in history.
    — Laurie Kellman, Fortune, 23 Jan. 2020
  • Water damage and mold marked the ornate, gilded plasterwork, and paint—in a fusty Empire red—was peeling off the walls.
    — Alice Cavanagh, Architectural Digest, 17 Dec. 2024
  • But that doesn’t mean that the attire of the popular-everywhere-except-America sport is fusty.
    — André-Naquian Wheeler, WSJ, 1 Dec. 2020
  • For Rihanna, now in her third trimester of pregnancy, fusty notions of maternity wear were an easy target.
    — Chioma Nnadi, Vogue, 12 Apr. 2022
  • At 30, Kurz took control of the People’s Party, the fusty center-right party that had long lagged in the polls.
    — Griff Witte, Washington Post, 13 Oct. 2017
  • Blues was considered fusty, old granddaddy music, but a new generation of young Austin artists and fans became enamored with the sound.
    — Deborah Sengupta Stith, Austin American-Statesman, 22 Apr. 2024
  • The image that usually beckons of a vintage store is one that is fusty, cramped and dimly lit, filled with garments organized without design or backstory.
    — Leah Dolan, CNN Money, 10 Feb. 2026
  • Nathan is fairly ridiculous in his fusty attachment to family lore, but even characters who disagree with him don’t really want to eviscerate the guy.
    — oregonlive, 9 June 2021
  • When the Super 8 motel chain underwent a major face lift a couple of years ago, its corporate leaders had some fun with the brand’s old, fusty image.
    — James Sullivan, BostonGlobe.com, 2 May 2018
  • Kudos to the establishment for discarding that fusty notion about reds being acceptable only with certain foods, whites with others.
    — Tim Smith, baltimoresun.com, 21 May 2018
  • Ghosn was brought in to shake up a fusty corporate culture and engineered an incredible turnaround, but his success and grandstanding sowed the seeds of his comeuppance.
    — Jeff Kingston For Cnn Business Perspectives, CNN, 17 Jan. 2020
  • Airplane seats may seem fusty and clunky, but any design that works inside an airplane has to be lightweight and well engineered, especially when your seat can also be used as a flotation device.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 9 Dec. 2019
  • But her habit of getting great dirt, along with her lightning-fast publishing speed and gleeful prose style, made the age-old daily papers and trade publications seem fusty by comparison.
    — Jacob Bernstein, New York Times, 21 Jan. 2023
  • And at the opening of this story, that stock happens to be GameStop, the somewhat fusty chain of shopping-mall retail stores that sell new and used gaming hardware and software.
    — Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post, 12 Sep. 2023
  • His sons, who have had to grow up with a cannier and more transactional understanding of celebrity, will continue to make Charles look fusty by comparison.
    — Vulture, 8 Sep. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fusty.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: