folderol [fol-duh-rol]

noun:
1 a useless ornament or accessory; a trifle
2 mere nonsense; foolish talk or ideas

Examples:

Americans left all that royal folderol about titles behind them in 1776. Yet here we are, nearly 250 years later, agog about princes and dukes, queens and consorts, and the rest of the mystifying rules about royal style - and we're not talking about fashion. (Maria Puente, What's the difference between queen and 'Queen Consort'? Camilla's future title, explained, USA Today, February 2022)

Yet Bennett and pianist Ralph Sharon strip away any and all rococo folderol to get to the meat of rejection with their spare, cutting (yet still happily hammy) rendition. (A D Amorosi, The Best of Tony Bennett: 15 Essential Musical Moments to Lose Your Heart To, Variety, July 2023)

She called it the Fairy Castle; it was a massive, exquisitely constructed dollhouse that she took on a national tour to raise money for charity. There is, yes, too much ink spilled over the real jewels in it, the craftsmen who created it and so on, but without all that folderol she wouldn’t have gotten to its library. (Carolyn Kellogg, The guilty pleasure of reading Hollywood memoirs, Los Angeles Times, June 2017)

In the Hanging Rock sort of community, having all the snobbishness of Fifth Avenue, Back Bay, and Rittenhouse Square, with the added torment of the snobbishness being perpetually ungratified - in such communities, beneath a surface reeking culture and idealistic folderol, there is a coarse and brutal materialism, a passion for money, for luxury, for display, that equals aristocratic societies at their worst (David Graham Phillips, The Price She Paid)

Origin:

Also falderal, falderall, falderol, etc., 18c. nonsense words from refrains of old songs; also tol-de-rol, etc. The meaning 'gewgaw, trifle' is attested from 1820. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Hogwash. Claptrap. Hooey. Drivel. Malarkey. English is rife with words that mean 'nonsense,' and 'folderol' is one of the many. Though not the most common of the words for nonsense, it's been around since 1820 and is still heard today. 'Folderol' comes from 'fol-de-rol' (or 'fal-de-ral'), which used to be a nonsense refrain in songs, much like 'tra-la-la.' The oldest recorded instance of someone 'singing folderol' occurs in Irish dramatist George Farquhar's 1701 play Sir Harry Wildair, in which a character sings, 'Fal, al, deral!' (Merriam-Webster)

fustian [fuhs-chuhn]

noun:
1 a stout fabric of cotton and flax
2 inflated or turgid language in writing or speaking
adjective:
1 pompous or bombastic, as language
2 worthless; cheap

Examples:

Freed of the architectural fustian of the Frick's Gilded Age home, the art breathes anew, each painting in its own world rather than entwined with others as part of a decorative ensemble. (Philip Kennicott, Sotheby’s purchase of the former Whitney Museum is a quiet tragedy, The Washington Post, June 2023)

The original play was apparently a bit of a screed against the 'New York idea of marriage,' to wit: "Marry for whim and leave the rest to luck and the divorce courts!" Auburn's gutted the script of all such regressive fustian, but in its place, he suggests nothing more thrilling, dramatic, or socially destabilizing than gentle rom-com symmetries. (Scott Brown, Stage Dive: David Auburn’s Back! Sort Of, New York Vulture, January 2011)

Before him all was staid, orderly, scripted and largely confined to the studio. It was fustian, beige, humdrum. (Matthew Fort, Why we love Keith Floyd, The Guardian, August 2009)

"Pooh!" said Sophy. "Mind your horses, Charles, and don't talk fustian to me." (Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy)

The knight is first dressed in a doublet of fustian, lined with satin, which is cut with holes for ventilation. (Charles John Ffoulkes, Armour & Weapons)

Yes, there were swells here, ball-room coxcombs in fustian and felt. (Charles Maurice Davies, Mystic London: or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis)

Origin:

c 1200, from Old French fustaigne, fustagne (12c, Modern French futaine), from Medieval Latin fustaneum, perhaps from Latin fustis 'staff, stick of wood; cudgel, club' as a loan-translation of Greek xylina lina 'linens of wood' (i.e. 'cotton'). But the Medieval Latin word also is sometimes said to be from Fostat, town near Cairo where this cloth was manufactured. [Klein finds this derivation untenable.] Figurative sense of 'pompous, inflated language' recorded by 1590s. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Fustian first entered English in the 13th century, by way of Anglo-French, as a term for a kind of fabric. (Its ultimate Latin source is probably the word fustis, meaning 'tree trunk'.) Several centuries into use as a noun and an attributive noun, fustian spread beyond textiles to describe pretentious writing or speech. Christopher Marlowe was a pioneer in the word's semantic expansion: in his 16th-century play Doctor Faustus, he employs the word in this new way when the student Wagner says, "Let thy left eye be diametarily [sic] fixed upon my right heel, with quasi vestigiis nostris insistere," and the clown replies, "God forgive me, he speaks Dutch fustian." And later, the titular doctor himself is called 'Dr Fustian' repeatedly by a horse dealer - an apt misnomer considering the Doctor's speech habits. (Merriam-Webster)

feculent [fek-yuh-luhnt]

adjective:
1 full of dregs or fecal matter; filthy, scummy, muddy, or foul

Examples:

Making matters worse for the hapless man, his feculent pants were pulled down a little during his escapade, partially revealing his underwear as he stood cuffed in front of an officer. (Yaron Steinbuch, UK suspect trying to flee cops lands neck-deep in cow manure pit , New York Post, December 2020)

Every time an old, smarmy sitcom, or a pallid network drama, or a toy ad that masqueraded as a cringeworthy children's cartoon gets dredged from the feculent muck of history's lake bed and rebooted for a contemporary audience, our cultural blood pressure incrementally drops, our collective pulse grows that much threadier, our soft tissues go just a scosh more necrotic. (Glen Weldon, New 'Rocky And Bullwinkle' Is Something We Hope You'll Really Like, NPR, May 2018)

It was powerful and ocean-worthy and maneuverable, Mr Byrnes said. Though its storage tanks are empty, the feculent odor of its cargo is unmistakable. (Corey Kilgannon, For Sale: Aging Boat That Had an Unenviable Job, The New York Times, April 2015)

It hit him squarely in the face, and the feculent contents streamed down to his chin. (Charles Heber Clark, Out of the Hurly-Burly)

In due time he was dragged across, half strangled, and dreadfully beslubbered by the feculent waters. (Ambrose Bierce, 'The City of Political Distinction')

Origin:

'muddy, turbid, full of dregs or impurities,' late 15c, from Latin faeculentus 'abounding in dregs,' from stem faec- 'sediment, dregs' + adjective suffix -ulentus 'full of.' (Online Etymology Dictionary)