noun · first recorded 1994 · status: emerging
Fogust
1.August in San Francisco, when the rest of the country has summer and the western half of the city has wet hair. Tourists buy a sweatshirt; locals bring one from home and act superior.
At the Outside Lands gate, Maya looked at the tourists in tank tops and said, "First Fogust?" while opening her tote full of emergency puffers.
01Origin
Fogust is the obvious portmanteau of fog and August, which means several damp communities appear to have invented it independently. The earliest print use located is a 1994 Cruising World article about the Inside Passage, not San Francisco. Word Spy later recorded uses in Northern California and Maine, including a Maine lobsterman credited locally with coining it in 2008. No single inventor survives the visibility conditions.
The term was firmly established in San Francisco by the mid-2010s and was amplified by the Karl the Fog account. SFGATE used it in a 2016 weather headline, Karl declared the first day of Fogust on X in 2017, and the Washington Post introduced it nationally in 2018. It has since become routine August copy for Bay Area meteorologists and publications, which is how a pun acquires municipal tenure.
02Notable sightings
karl the fog · @KarlTheFogHappy first day of Fogust, the best month of the year!
Karl the Fog · @KarlTheFogThe best part of Fogust is that it feels like it will never end
03Spread the ism
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