What is a fud? A woman in curl papers and her oldest kimona. A man in his shirt-sleeves with his suspenders hanging from two buttons, down behind. It is a half built house; half cooked potatoes on the back of the stove. Anyone in stocking feet. (See Frowk.)
No one can help being fuddy, at times, so long as there is house-cleaning and moving to be done; but some fuds are fuddier than others. A house that is being reshingled, for instance, is far less fuddy than an actress washing greasepaint off her face, or stumbling in a peignoir through a Pullman car, her hair tousled, to reach the dressing-room. (See Spigg.)
Ellen’s top bureau drawer is fuddy, after she has tried to find “that veil.” The parlor and library are fuddy after the reception.
It’s an unpleasant subject. Let us end it, with the mention of half-dried wash and unwashed dishes in the kitchen sink. (See Uglet.)
I call you fuddy—how severe
My accents disapproving!
And yet, you cannot help it, dear,
Alas, for we are moving!
The house is fuddy—so am I,
And so is everybody!
The moving van is late, so why
Should we not all be fuddy?
Frowk, n. 1. A spicy topic. 2. An action considered to be about half wrong.
Frow´]cous, a. Nice, but naughty, or considered so; piquantly provocative; risqué, pertaining to sex.
How frowcous is the limerick, in its most perfect form! That frowk which it is just barely possible to recite at a dinner party:— “There was a young lady so thin, that she slightly resembled a pin; don’t think that I’d creep to her window and peep—I was told by a friend, who looked in.”
’Tis a frowcous epoch—eugenics, white slavery, and the “dangerous age” are now the vogue, and a play that’s not a frowk can scarcely make a hit on Broadway. (See Ovotch.)