fuster

English

Pronunciation

(General American) IPA^(key): /ˈfʌstɚ/
(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈfʌstə/

Etymology 1

From Middle English fuster, fuystour, fuystor, from Anglo-Norman fuster, Old French fuyster, fust, ultimately from Latin fūstis. Compare French fût, Old French fustier.

Noun

fuster (plural fusters)

A saddle tree maker.
- 1924, Proceedings and Reports of the Belfast Natural History and Philisophical society, page 65:
  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.
- 1951, Eilert Ekwall, Two early London subsidy rolls, page 86:
  There were some leather-workers, as 4 or 5 curriers or tanners, 2 kissers, 6 or 7 saddlers or fusters.
- 1995, Kingsley M. Oliver, Hold fast, sit sure: the history of the Worshipful Company of Saddlers of the City of London 1160-1960, page 18:
  It was the task of the fusters, or joiners, to make the wooden saddlebows while the painters were employed to decorate the completed saddles.

Etymology 2

Possibly related to fuss or fester?

Verb

fuster (third-person singular simple present fusters, present participle fustering, simple past and past participle fustered)

To fret, whine, or complain.
- 1993, Kevin Rafter, Neil Blaney, a Soldier of Destiny, →ISBN, page 47:
  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.
- 2013, Anne Gildea, I've Got Cancer, What's Your Excuse?:, →ISBN:
  'This looks interesting,' I said, to my still-fustering-about-what-he should-do brother.
- 2014, Diana Pharaoh Francis, The Cipher, →ISBN:
  “Now, Vera. I said I'd pay for the hack, so you can just stop fustering about it.
To fuss; to meddle or micromanage.
- 1954, Chicago Review - Volume 8, page 103:
  Real hep, my people. Fustering mother. Meddling sisters
- 1982, John Tyrrell, Leos Janácek: Kát'a Kabanová, →ISBN, page 71:
  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.
- 1997, Sandra Tsing Loh, If You Lived Here, You Would be Home by Now, →ISBN, page 84:
  "Let me be!" she imagined Jane Ann Williams exclaiming to a fustering Shirley Kent.
To become marked with signs of age or decay.
- 1954, Esther Meynell, Small talk in Sussex, page 155:
  She will clean her cottage — though its condition of age and fustering decay may render it an almost impossible task.
- 1989, Margaret Ann Courtney, Folklore & Legends of Cornwall, page 149:
  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.
- 2013, Alan Warner, The Deadman's Pedal, →ISBN, page 17:
  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.
(Ireland) To fumble; to work clumsily.
- 1987, Pat Nevin, Ireland, where Our Roots Go Deep, page 225:
  Before the sun was at it's 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.
- 1997, Dan Yashinsky, Ghostwise: A Book of Midnight Stories, →ISBN, page 82:
  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.
- 2012, Kirk Marshall, The Signatory, →ISBN, page 100:
  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.