frowst
- The warm, stuffy, and somewhat stale atmosphere of an unventilated room, often considered cozy by those inside it.
- As a verb, to lounge in such a warm, stuffy room.
In a sentence
- The library had the comfortable frowst of a room that had been heated and inhabited for decades without ever being properly aired.
- On rainy Sundays he preferred to frowst indoors with a novel rather than brave the cold outside.
Usage note. Frowst is chiefly British and somewhat informal or literary; 'fug' is a near-synonym that is slightly more widely known and used in similar contexts.
Where it comes from
English frowst · entered English 19th c.
Of uncertain origin; it appears to be a chiefly British dialectal and colloquial word that emerged in the 19th century. It may be related to the dialectal 'frowsty' (musty, fusty), though its ultimate derivation is not definitively established by mainstream sources. It is recorded in English from at least the mid-19th century.