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Word of the Day Archive
Friday May 16, 2008

subfusc \sub-FUHSK\, adjective:
Dark or dull in color; drab, dusky.

The tea-cosy, property of one Edmund Gravel -- "known as the Recluse of Lower Spigot to everybody there and elsewhere," as the book's first page informs us -- is haunted by a six-legged emcee for various "subfusc but transparent" ghosts.
-- Emily Gordon, "The Doubtful Host", Newsday, November 8, 1998

Her inscrutable figure -- imposing in designer subfusc, slightly donnish, reminiscent of Vita Sackville-West, to whom she was distantly related -- baffled and intrigued some.
-- Yvonne Whiteman, "Obituary: Frances Lincoln", Independent, March 6, 2001

Subfusc comes from Latin subfuscus, "brownish, dark," from sub-, "under" + fuscus, "dark-colored."

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for subfusc

 

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