Brewer's: Fustian

Stuff, bombast, pretentious words. Properly, a sort of cotton velvet. (French, futaine; Spanish, fustan, from Fustat in Egypt, where the cloth was first made.) (See Bombast; Camelot.)

“Discourse fustian with one's own shadow.” -

Shakespeare: Othello, ii. 3.

“Some scurvy quaint collection of fustian phrases, and uplandish words.” —Heywood: Faire Maide of the Exchange, ii. 2.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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