Definitions
Etymologies
- Origin unknown. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Alas, the taverns reputation declined over the years and by 1775 Garrick was referring to the frowsty bowers of the Dog and Duck as peopled with half-drunk fauns and dryads breaking lamps.”
“Placed on Diana's left at table, he gave her much voluble information about her neighbors, mostly ill-natured; he spoke familiarly of "that clever chap Marsham," as of a politician who owed his election for the division entirely to the good offices of Mr. Fred Birch's firm, and described Lady Lucy as "an old dear," though very "frowsty" in her ideas.”
“Lisa Spirling's production has a frowsty, precise design by Polly Sullivan and makes a shot at an interesting question: what makes people collude with horror?”
The Guardian: Richard III; Lullaby; Hundreds & Thousands – review
“This is a street party that has rendered the street invisible, blocking off the frowsty buildings, replacing traffic with communal tables set with vases of spring flowers, even lowering the no doubt sullen sky with a breezy foliage of flags and bunting.”
The Guardian: The big picture: a coronation street party in Islington, London, 1937
“Explore it from the bottom of the bill and you'll encounter something different: tracts of featureless industrial estates, a world in which Wolseley police cars clatter under railway bridges in Croydon and mid-price actors occupy frowsty suburban drags.”
“Sometimes I suspected that my uncle liked the frowsty old play because he acted the part of the Father in it, with one scene of tearful rejoicing that his son had come of age at the beginning, one of tearful lamentation when he thought his son dead near the middle, and one of tearful reunion when his son appeared alive and well at the end.”
“Roger & Gallet Signature Mini Guest Soaps -- (tip: store the soap in linens closets, sock drawers, etc ... and freshen up the frowsty air!)”
“There was bedding at the back, rolled up; and at the front of the room a frowsty old woman in a chair picked half-heartedly at some needlework.”
“She took out the thimble and looked at it again in the dim, swaying interior of the frowsty carriage.”
“Roger & Gallet Signature Mini Guest Soaps -- tip: store the soap in linens closets, sock drawers, etc... and freshen up the frowsty air!”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘frowsty’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Stink Different™
What-the-smell is that?
hircine, jumentous, hyena butter, cadaverine, new car smell, teen spirit, parosmia, hircismus, ylang-ylang, burnt hair, hydrogen sulfide, gay bomb and 115 more...
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calefactory
just plain hot
hot as blue blazes, frowsty, simoomy, scorcher, solfatara, (hot) dog days, burninga, chilidog days, red-hot, saburration, whot, sudatorium and 11 more...
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The Aubrey/Maturin List I'm Gonna Mak...
I'm wading through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels one by one, and someday, I'll wade through them again and list all the words I learned while reading them.
Edit: I started ma...studdingsail, carronade, mumchance, grumlin-futtocks, crosscat-harpings, holystone, sennit, orlop, orchitis, negus, kevel, altumal and 1112 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, F
felony, frolic, fend, fuselage, farthingale, freewheeling, frigorific, flummery, fancypants, felsitic, flagstone, flageolet and 295 more...
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O! Timballo
for the same
tea-poy, pooking fork, ait, eyot, quodlibet, milk leg, tussie-mussie, calash, gueules, caitiff, bindery, demi-rep and 224 more...
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5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
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bluemartian's Words
spruiker, adytum, ruminate, exedra, moonglade, spindrift, syzygy, glissade, skysill, pellucid, aquarelle, tatterdemalion and 108 more...
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"Words, words, words."
abase, abject, abstruse, adjutant, altercation, altruistic, angst, anodyne, anomie, ape, apprehensive, aquiline and 310 more...
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Nifty Misc
rechauffe, merrythought, fossick, flacon, douceur, prandial, barbican, chuffed, whinge, bumf, knackered, ponce and 37 more...
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April words
cavalier, ebb, frowsty, peccadillo, rifling, rixatrix, harangue, heed, apathetic, erudite, spareness, garish and 10 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for frowsty.

chained_bear "They and their damp, close-packed beds filled the unventilated 'tween-decks with a strong, all-pervading smell of frowsty carnivores, far worse than the collection of vegetarian marsupials Stephen had carried from New Holland in an earlier voyage..."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate, 291-292 Feb 9, 2008