🇬🇧🇨🇳 musty - 发霉 : English Lesson

Meaning of "musty" ("发霉"), detailed definition, and a short video lesson below.

Musty describes something that smells stale, moldy, or damp—like an old basement, a forgotten closet, or Grandpa’s shoes after a long walk. It’s the kind of smell that makes you scrunch your nose and wonder if something has been sitting there since dinosaurs roamed the Earth!

Watch and listen to this English flashcard to understand the word in more detail, with an easy example sentence.

The musty smell in our basement is so bad, even ghosts refuse to haunt it.

I left a sandwich in my locker for a month. Now it’s musty, angry, and possibly alive.

Mom told me to clean my room because it smells musty. I told her it’s just “vintage.”

I found an old teddy bear in the attic. It was cute but smelled so musty I had to wear a gas mask.

I opened an ancient history book at school, and it smelled so musty, I think it sneezed dust at me.

Old attic box opened; a musty breath hit her face. The musty blanket fell out, a musty book stuck to rotten pages, a musty doll blinked blind eyes. She gagged, fanned the air, put everything back in the box, closed it, and left the musty room to breathe clean night air.

This word is at the C2 level, which means it represents the highest mastery of English. It’s often used in specialized or highly formal contexts and helps you communicate with precision and subtlety, much like a native speaker.

Expanding your English vocabulary is one of the best ways to improve your pronunciation, spelling, and confidence in English. Watch the video above to memorize the word, understand its meaning, and see example sentences in action. Discover related words to grow your vocabulary naturally. Add words to your playlist for stress-free, effective learning—anytime, anywhere! Watch, learn, repeat.