Fustian
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Fustian. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
fus' chan, formerly a costly textile of linen and wool, woven with a pile, or heavily napped. It was in use during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries for priests' robes and women's dresses. Gradually the fabric came to be imitated in linen and cotton, and finally in cotton alone. The strength and durability of fustian made it suitable for laborers and servants, and its use was confined at one time to this class of persons. At the present time the word fustian is a general term including several different fabrics of similar qualities. Moleskin, velveteen, corduroy, beaverteen, and thickset are fustian. From the fact that fustian was thick and stiff, increasing the apparent size of the wearer, the word came to be used in a figurative sense to designate a florid style of speaking or writing, in which words and phrases are more high-sounding than the subject warrants. So the word bombast, originally meaning cotton batting, which is used for padding, has acquired a similar, and even stronger figurative meaning. Prithee, let's talk fustian a little, and gull them; make them believe we are great scholars.--Ben Jonson. Bombast is commonly the delight of that audience which loves poetry but understands it not.--Dryden.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a species of cotton cloth manufacture to velsomewhat similar in vet, having, in addition to the warp and in the weft, a species of pile. When loom, this pile presents the appearance are afterof a set of loops; but these The ward cut in two and sheared down. fustian, when polished and finished, presents an evenly-ribbed surface on the of this exterior. The best descriptions as class of goods are those known besides cotton-velvet and velveteen; but , and these there are moleskin, corduroy . See WEAVING. In several other kinds literature, a forced, bombastic style of writing.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts treat fustian first as a working fabric and only secondly as a figure of speech; that order has reversed. When Aiton's wrote in 1910 that its "strength and durability" made it the cloth of "laborers and servants," fustian jackets were still ordinary working dress in the English Midlands and Lancashire; the trade collapsed with the wider decline of British cotton manufacture in the twentieth century, and moleskin, beaverteen and thickset are now specialist or historical names rather than shop goods. Only corduroy and velveteen, listed by Collier's in 1921 as members of the family, remain in general use, and few who buy them would call them fustian. The figurative sense the entries mention last is now the one almost every reader meets first, chiefly in criticism and political comment.
Written for this edition, 2026.