subfusc
Americanadjective
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subfuscous; dusky.
-
dark and dull; dingy; drab.
a subfusc mining town.
adjective
noun
Etymology
Origin of subfusc
1755–65; < Latin subfuscus subfuscous
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.
The courtiers tramping across the green eye them: Suffolk with his big beard, his flashing eye, his big chest, and Master Secretary subfusc, low-slung, square.
From The Guardian • Feb. 22, 2020
As I raised my phone to snap a picture of the amber stone columns radiant in the evening light, a cyclist in subfusc screeched and swerved to avoid me, yelling “Tourist!”
From The Wall Street Journal • Sep. 13, 2016
It was a view that mixed the bucolic, the nostalgic, the subfusc urban world, and an occasional hint of exoticism.
From The Guardian • Jul. 12, 2013
The atmosphere is deliciously muted and studious, with the rhymes "desk"/ "dusk" conjuring the unspoken word, "subfusc".
From The Guardian • Mar. 7, 2011
The Jockey Swells' pinched-up countenance, with jutting eyebrows and practically no cheeks, had under George's racing-cap of "peacock blue" a subfusc hue like that of old furniture.
From The Country House by Galsworthy, John
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.
