Pronunciations (2)
-
/ˈfʌstɚ/
Pronunciation notes
- General-American
-
/ˈfʌstə/
Pronunciation notes
- Received-Pronunciation
Noun
A saddle tree maker.
- Examples
-
More examples (1)
There were the Fusters, not to be confused with Fusters who wove fustians ; the Sadler's Fusters made the wooden frame for saddles, which used to be much more elaborate affairs than our modern saddles are.
There were some leather-workers, as 4 or 5 curriers or tanners, 2 kissers, 6 or 7 saddlers or fusters.
It was the task of the fusters, or joiners, to make the wooden saddlebows while the painters were employed to decorate the completed saddles.
Verb
To fret, whine, or complain.
- Examples
-
More examples (1)
Nagle also remembers that Blaney 'didn't object to you telling him what one thought ... he didn't like fustering, that wouldn't please him, but he didn't mind you speaking your piece even if he might strongly disagree.
'This looks interesting,' I said, to my still-fustering-about-what-he should-do brother.
“Now, Vera. I said I'd pay for the hack, so you can just stop fustering about it.
To fuss; to meddle or micromanage.
- Examples
-
Real hep, my people. Fustering mother. Meddling sisters
More examples (1)
She cannot leave the fustering, festering middle-class world she finds herself in, to embrace her love in 'pagan' intuitiveness; what prevents her is her Christian conscience, which makes her aware of a reality beyond the wanton vacuity of the young lovers, Varvara and Kudrjáš.
"Let me be!" she imagined Jane Ann Williams exclaiming to a fustering Shirley Kent.
To become marked with signs of age or decay.
- Examples
-
She will clean her cottage — though its condition of age and fustering decay may render it an almost impossible task.
When Christ was upon the middle earth the Jews pricked him, his blood sprung up into heaven, his flesh never rotted nor fustered, no more I hope will not thine.
More examples (1)
Up ahead, a bunch of first years – they were from Nine Mile House — feigned to shove another of their party from the bank and down into the shallow burn water below: the flat brown boulders beneath the clear surface were fustered with brown silt laverings.
To fumble; to work clumsily.
Usage- Ireland
- Examples
-
More examples (3)
Before the sun was at it's^([sic]) highest, I almost gave in (admitted) that the Jalap had me bet (beat), because there I was spending more time running like a redshank to the gripe and fustering (fumbling) with the galluses and my trousers, than at the mowing.
And the poor spailpin fanach running like the devil, his clothes tearing on briars and brambles, and his feet soaking and dirty water running out of his boots, and the three big buckos giving him every dirty look if he fustered or faltered, looks that'd sour milk or peel paint from walls.
If a bream or a perch or a pilchard or a bass revealed its iridescent stomach on the decks of my clipper-ship, whilst crewmen fustered and flapped below the wheelhouse with their buckets and tridents to parse the bycatch from the clustering glut of prawns we heaped onto ice, I would elevate the piscine interloper to my eye and watch it strive to communicate through the burden of air and without a tongue to maipulate language in an endearing or persuasive way.