subfusc

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Thoroughly mundane but I must share it!

I came across this word in Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers. She used it twice:

The speakers were in both cases highly educated women (the story takes place at Oxford) and I thought it was some sort of faintly vulgar Latin pun. My confusion was complicated by the fact that she hyphenated the word in each case it was the last word in the sentence: I was uncertain whether the word had been abbreviated.

However, it turns out to be a regular, if little-used, English adjective. It means drab or dusky colored, and, by extension, gloomy.

I also came across this quote in the same book, which I thought was pertinent to the SDMB:

I thought of a clever new sig line last night, but I forgot it when I woke up this morning.

2

sub-fusc? It’s not in my dictionary. Then again, in my book cleanliness is next to tapioca, indicating a great many pages missing.

Yes, I got here through the “Most Favourite Poster” thread.

3

Subfusc. Cool word. I first ran across it in one of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin books. No hyphen, though.

4

Sub-fusc is the formal dress worn by members of Oxford University, specifically for University examinations, matriculation and degree ceremonies.

It consists of:

Men: a dark-coloured suit, white shirt, white bow-tie, black shoes, cap and gown.

Women: dark skirt or trousers, white shirt of blouse, black thing like a bootlace tie (don’t know what you’d call it), black shoes, cap and gown.

By extension, used as an adjective to describe a person, it means straight-laced, formal or unadventurous rather than gloomy.

5

I thought the adjective form would be subfuscated. You normally hear the word as a verb - subfuscate. I thought it meant hide or veil.

6

That’s obfuscate.

Sub-fusc is, IIRC, an abbreviation of the Latin subfuscus, meaning “dark-coloured”.

7

TomH –

Thanks for the update. I thought the usage was a little specialized but when I found the word (sans hyphen) in the dictionary I discarded my hypothesis. Turns out I was right all along (I love it when that happens!)

Your recollection of the etymology is accurate according to my dictionary, BTW.

Are you an Oxford grad?

De gustibus non est disputandem

8

Pluto,

Sorry for the delay in replying: I’ve been scouring the Net for a picture of some undergraduates in sub-fusc that I could post a link to, but have failed to find one. I would have thought that the University web sites would be riddled with them, but no. I guess it’s part of their policy of playing down the more “traditional” aspects of University life in order to attract more students from state schools (i.e. what Americans call “public schools”).

In answer to your question, though, yes I am.

9

Spoke too soon:

Here is a picture of two students wearing sub-fusc.

And another one.

10

Damn UBB code!

That should be:

Here are two students in sub-fusc.

And here is another one.

11

I give up. I can’t work out what I’m doing wrong. This has worked OK for me before. Here are the URLs:

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/9395/subfusc.jpg

http://www.new.ox.ac.uk/~bruce/git.jpg]another one

If this doesn’t work, I won’t clog up the Board with any more attempts: go to yahoo.co.uk and search for sub fusc. Follow the link to “Mulder’s Oxford” and the one to new.ox.ac.uk and you’ll find the pictures.

If you can be bothered. I won’t mind if you can’t.