fustiness

plural fustinesses

1. uncountableusuallyThe quality of being fusty.

   [T. E.] Lawrence said that in the end he felt himself to be fighting not for the imperial British but for the rebellious Arabs. All too often he conflicted with British bureaucratic fustiness.

   2014 March 2, Jan Morris, “Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson, review: A skilful account of T. E. Lawrence and his role in the painful birth of an emerging Middle East [print version: A rock in Arabia's shifting sands, 1 March 2014, p. R26]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review)

   1 more example

   […] I was running away from drabness, fustiness, snobbery, the claustrophobia of close horizons, and from my inability, although I am quite an attractive rat, to make headway in the rat-race.

   1980 [1962], Ian Fleming, chapter 1, in The Spy Who Loved Me, →ISBN, page 3