musty
1 Americannoun
-
musties
plural
adjective
-
smelling or tasting old, stale, or mouldy
-
old-fashioned, dull, or hackneyed
musty ideas
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of musty1
1520–30; perhaps variant of moisty ( Middle English; see moist, -y 1) with loss of i before s as in master
Origin of musty2
First recorded in 1700–10; noun use of musty 1
Explanation
Use the word musty to describe an unclean, stale, and possibly moldy smell. If something smells musty that means it’s probably been sitting in a damp corner without any air for a little too long. Musty smells take time to develop: they’re caused by dampness and mold, and signal some amount of decay. You might also call the smell of a musty old basement rank or foul. But people also use musty to insult someone’s writing, or their ideas. A musty speech wouldn’t just be old-fashioned, it would be old in a bad way: rotten and boring.
Vocabulary lists containing musty
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
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Hatchet
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Its most famous patron, Ernest Hemingway, sits in statue form alone at the bar in the musty, sweltering darkness.
From Barron's ● Aug. 18, 2026
Between the musty setup and saccharine score, it’s the film equivalent of a bowl of stale candies.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026
New research now shows that the distinctive musty scent of mummified remains holds valuable clues about how these elaborate burial rituals were carried out.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 16, 2026
Edith Wharton is a moth-eaten gown in the musty attic of American literature.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 5, 2026
I wasn’t leaving that musty old building without irrefutable proof that Sir Fig Newton was off his game.
From "Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence" by Sonja Thomas
Led by Susan Angelo, Jan Wikstrom and Ellen Geer, this ensemble, under the direction of Willow Geer, diverts and distracts from the mustier aspects of Coward’s style.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
The language is honed and specific, effortless yet charged with feeling, where Thomson-DeVeaux’s version can feel mustier and blurry.
From New York Times ● Jun. 16, 2020
That will resonate for most, though, as a description better suited to status updates and Gchat windows than to that other, mustier form of writing: carefully composed prose.
From Slate ● Aug. 4, 2015
The inexpensive pulp paper plus the ink and glue in the binding gave the giant tomes a much mustier, paper-y odor than a standard paperback novel.
From Time ● Apr. 27, 2015
And I was out of the musty room and into the even mustier lobby.
From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou
Even the mustiest old chocolate Santa Claus wasn’t safe from him.
From "Inkheart" by Cornelia Funke
I'm afraid I must own, that I think your opinions are the oldest and mustiest I have met with this long time.'
From North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Was he not the idol of a select group who admired not only one another but also the satanism of Baudelaire, the hieratic obscenities of Beardsley, the mustiest Persian sage, the modernest American ballad-monger?
From South Wind by Norman Douglas
Accept, then, this book, which to those who care only for history will seem but an idle romance, while to the lovers of romance it may look strangely like the mustiest history.
From Alice of Old Vincennes by Maurice Thompson
You cannot know “all about the war and what they fought each other for” without delving very deep indeed into the mustiest by-ways of municipal history.
From The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries To-Day and in Days of Old by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
