musty
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "musty", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "musty" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "musty" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
musty is anEnglishadj. It means: Affected by dampness or mould; damp, mildewed, mouldy. Pronounced /ˈmʌsti/. Often confused with mute and mutt.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | musty |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /ˈmʌsti/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #35,838 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for musty is 5 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈmʌsti/. Corpus data places it at rank #35,838 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for musty, with forms such as "mmusty", "msuty", and "mussty". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "mute", "mutt", "MST", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: The adjective is derived from Late Middle English musty; further origin uncertain, possibly from one of the following: * From Anglo-Norman muste, moste, variants of moiste, muiste (“moist”), from Old French moiste (“clammy, damp, moist, wet”) (modern French… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is musty, spelled M-U-S-T-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Affected by dampness or mould; damp, mildewed, mouldy.
- 2Having an odour or taste of mould; also (generally), having a stale or unfresh odour or taste.
- 3Characteristic of or relating to mould or mouldiness.
- 4Of attitudes, ideas, writing, or other abstract things: no longer fresh or interesting; outdated, stale.
- 5Of a person: boring and unadventurous; also, old-fashioned, stuck in the past.
- 6Bad-tempered, grumpy, irritable.
Etymology
The adjective is derived from Late Middle English musty; further origin uncertain, possibly from one of the following: * From Anglo-Norman muste, moste, variants of moiste, muiste (“moist”), from Old French moiste (“clammy, damp, moist, wet”) (modern French moite (“muggy; sticky, sweaty”)), from a blend of Vulgar Latin *mucidus (from Latin mūcidus (“mouldy, musty”), from Old Latin mūceō (“to be mouldy or musty”) + -idus (suffix meaning ‘tending to’, forming adjectives)) + Latin mustum (“unfermented or partially fermented grape juice, must; new wine”) (from mustus (“fresh; young; unfermented”), from Proto-Indo-European *mus-, *mews- (“damp; moss”)). * From another language derived from the above Latin words (compare the cognates below). * A variant of Middle English mosty, moisti (“damp, humid, wet, moisty; of fruit: moist and juicy”) [and other forms] (perhaps influenced by must (“fruit (usually grape) juice which has been or will be fermented”)), from moist, moiste (“damp, humid; moist, wet; well-irrigated, well-watered; liquid; of ale: new; (figuratively) not withered, fresh; carnal, lascivious; raw, undisciplined”) (from Old French moiste: see above) + -i (suffix forming adjectives). Compare Middle French moisi (“mouldy”), an adjective use of the past participle of moisir (“(to cause) to go mouldy, to moulder”) (modern French moisir), from Latin mūcēre, the present active infinitive of Old Latin mūceō (“to be mouldy or musty”): see above. The English word is analysable as must (“mould; mustiness”) + -y (suffix meaning ‘having the quality of’ forming adjectives); however, must is thought to be a back-formation from musty. The noun and verb are derived from the adjective. Cognates * Catalan mústic, musti (“wilted, withered; gloomy, sad”) * Galician murcho, mucho (“wilted, withered”) * Old Occitan moste (Occitan moste, mosti, musti (“damp, wet”) (Gascon)) * Portuguese murcho (“wilted, withered; gloomy, sad”) * Spanish mustio (“wilted, withered; gloomy, sad”)
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: mmusty,msuty,mussty,mustty,mustyy,musyt,mutsy,umsty
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for musty
Misspelling Variants of "musty"
Frequency rank: #35,838 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: