fustian

1. pretentious speech or writing; pompous language 2a. a coarse sturdy cloth made of cotton and flax b. any of several thick twilled cotton fabrics, such as corduroy, having a short nap


This word appears in a book review in Books & Culture: “Alas, Taylor has also inhaled deeply of the intellectual helium that inflates the ‘New Economy,’ and a fusillade of obfuscation permeates the text. There’s the fustian of ‘complexity’: ‘growing complexity,’ ‘increasingly complex,’ ‘infinitely complex.’ (‘Complexity’ and its cognates rank with ‘interesting’ and ‘problematic’ as tokens of mediocrity.)”

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:
<a href="" title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <s> <strike> <strong>