fug
/fʌɡ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.24 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area.
Countable; Informal; Uncountable
verb
To create a fug (“heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere”; etymology 1, noun sense 1) in (a place).
Transitive verb
verb
To put (someone or something) into a fug (“daze”; etymology 1, noun sense 2); to confuse, to daze.
Transitive verb
verb
Sometimes followed by up: to be surrounded by a fug (etymology 1, noun sense 1), for example, in an enclosed, stuffy place.
Intransitive verb
intj
Euphemistic form of fuck.
Example Sentences
- ""Someone's been too much for you," remarks Bistow, seating himself in the most comfortable chair, as a consolation for the prevailing fug."
- "There was a blizzard on. The cold was something frightful. Made one quite thankful to get back to the fug, though as a rule I think the way these trains are overheated is something scandalous."
- ""I love this time of the year," she said. "So delicious after the fug of summer. It makes one feel so alive.""
- "On certain days, when hot currents shimmered off Oyster's Reef, we would detect the chalk-dust of the mullock heaps, acrid; or, from the opal mines themselves, the ghastly fug of the tunnels and shafts."
- "The gym teacher left that year, his successors had no interest in boxing, and society soon passed into a zone where the idea of 13-year-old boys punching one other's faces for educational purposes became as unthinkable as the dense fug of tobacco smoke in our school's staff room."
- "The misty fug his breath had left on the window sparkled in the orange glare of the streetlamp outside, and the artificial light drained his face of all colour so that he looked ghostly beneath his shock of untidy black hair."
Etymology
The origin of the noun is unknown; originally dialectal and school slang, it is possibly derived from or related to one of the following: * Fog (“thick cloud that forms near the ground”), possibly ultimately from Proto-Germanic *feukaną (“to blow; to be blown away”) and from Proto-Indo-European *pew-, *pewg-, *pow- (“to billow; to blow; to drift”). * Fogo (“(UK, slang) stench”), a variant of hogo (“strong, unpleasant smell”), from haut gout, haut-goût (“(archaic) slight taint of decay, particularly in wild game meat, that used to be considered desirable; (obsolete) piquant or strong flavour”), from French hautgoût, from haut (“high”) + goût (“taste”). * A back-formation from fuggy. * A blend of funk (“foul or unpleasant smell”) + fog. The verb is derived from the noun.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /fʌɡ/
- British English: /fʌɡ/
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
fug-footer
fug-soccer
fug-socker