fug en · NOUN · etymology 1
Pronunciation
- (Southern-England) audio
- /fʌɡ/ (General-American, Received-Pronunciation)
- (General-American) audio
- /fʊɡ/ (Northern-England)
- /fɐɡ/ (Australia, New-Zealand)
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.
Meanings
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(countable, informal, qualifier:dialectal and school slang, uncountable) A heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area.
The hub, or nerve center, of the coach business was a big shed next to the stable. It smelled—no, it stank of—no, it fugged of—horses, leather, veterinary medicine, bad coal, brandy, and cheap cigars. That's what a fug was. You could have cut cubes out of the air and sold it for cheap building material.
2004 September 25, Terry Pratchett, “Bonfire”, in Going Postal (A Novel of Discworld; 33), New York, N.Y.: HarperCollinsPublishers, →ISBN, page 218: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.
1934 January 1, Agatha Christie, “The Evidence of Colonel Arbuthnot”, in Murder on the Orient Express (A Hercule Poirot Murder Mystery), New York, N.Y.: Pocket Books, published 1960, →OCLC, part II (The Evidence), page 128:"I love this time of the year," she said. "So delicious after the fug of summer. It makes one feel so alive."
1962, Olivia Manning, chapter 26, in The Spoilt City ([The Balkan Trilogy; 2]), London: William Heinemann, →OCLC, part 4 (The Raid), page 283: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.
2004 November 8, John Derbyshire, “The Straggler: Boxing Day”, in National Review, volume LVI, number 21, New York, N.Y.: National Review, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 56, column 2: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.
1996, Janette Turner Hospital, “Prologue”, in Oyster, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: W[illiam] W[arder] Norton & Company, published 1998, →ISBN, page 4:"Someone's been too much for you," remarks Bistow, seating himself in the most comfortable chair, as a consolation for the prevailing fug.
1888, [Edward Frederic Benson], chapter I, in Sketches from Marlborough, Marlborough, Wiltshire: Cha[rle]s Perkins, the “Times” Office, →OCLC, page 16:Inside, though, the little café was warm and bright, with a comforting fug of tea and baked bread and cakes.
2010, Benjamin Black [pseudonym; William John Banville], chapter 1, in Elegy for April […], New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN: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.
2005 July 16, J. K. Rowling [pseudonym; Joanne Rowling], “Will and Won’t”, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter; 6), London: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 42:
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(countable, figuratively) A state of chaos or confusion; a daze.
Viewed from this perspective, the Victorian era reeks of a suffocating and bigoted complacency, and, no doubt, many white imperialists existed in a fug of self-righteous superiority.
2006, Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races, →ISBN:There was a fug of fear in the room.
2002, Chris Beckett, “Marcher”, in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection, →ISBN:Her translations are dimmed over with a fug of late eighteenthcentury poetic diction, a striving for sublimity or for sentimental effect.
2014, Robert Anthony Welch, The Cold of May Day Monday: An Approach to Irish Literary History, →ISBN:Somewhere in the fug of her mind she remembered how to close it and fetched the pole, slotting it into the mechanism above and beginning to turn the handles.
2015, Kate Riordan, The Girl in the Photograph, →ISBN:But now am in total fug about what to text Roxster about tonight, and whether I should tell him about the nits.
2013, Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy, →ISBN, page 7:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| fugs | Number=Plur | lexicographic |
Deriveds
underfug · fug-socker · fug-footer · fug-soccer · fugged · fuggy
Translations (13)
sh zagušljiva atmosfera (heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area) · uk задуха (heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area) · sh težak zrak (heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area) · de Muff (heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area) · ka ჩახუთულობა (heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area) · ru спёртый воздух (heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area) · uk духота (heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area) · ru духота́ (heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area) · fi tunkkaisuus (heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area) · bg задух (heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area) · cs dusno (heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area) · mk за́дув (heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area) · ga plúchadh (heavy, musty, stuffy, or unpleasant atmosphere, usually in a crowded or poorly ventilated area)