mustily

mustily adverb: in a musty manner.

Adverb

mustily (comparative more mustily, superlative most mustily)

In a musty manner.
- […] nor are there any spirits, or very rare ones, which in growing old taste not sowrely and mustily.1603, Michel de Montaigne, Essayes, translated by John Florio, The Second Chapter, “Of Repenting,”
- All this is but a light-headed understanding now; I mean, why so melancholy? thou lookest mustily, methinks.1620, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, The World Tost at Tennis

He was no student mustily thinking in a dead language, but a gentleman in waiting to the king, knight of the Order of St.1903, Henry Dwight Sedgwick, “Montaigne”, in Essays on Great Writers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co, page 101:
The single window, square and mustily curtained, is so small that it cannot be imagined to admit much light on the brightest of days […]1912, Booth Tarkington, Beauty and the Jacobin: an Interlude of the French Revolution, Harper & Bros., page 2:
He felt he was intruding, and hurried past the door with the coloured glass panes into the Book Room, which smelled mustily of old paper and worm-eaten wood.1961, V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas, Vintage International, published 2001, Part Two, Chapter 1:

comparative	more mustily
superlative	most mustily

From musty + -ly.

What does mustily mean?: Mustily means in a musty manner.
How do you use mustily in a sentence?: He was no student mustily thinking in a dead language, but a gentleman in waiting to the king, knight of the Order of St.
What part of speech is mustily?: Mustily is an adverb.

Adapted from Wiktionary: mustily (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “mustily.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mustily. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.