Word.ws English Dictionary

collect dust

collect dust verb: to remain untouched and unused for a long period of time.

Verb

collect dust (third-person singular simple present collects dust, present participle collecting dust, simple past and past participle collected dust)

  1. (idiomatic) To remain untouched and unused for a long period of time.
    • The trophies on his wall reminding him of his heyday are now just collecting dust.

Synonyms of collect dust

Forms of collect dust

third-person singular presentcollects dust
present participlecollecting dust
past participlecollected dust
pastcollected dust

Questions about collect dust

What does collect dust mean?
Collect dust means to remain untouched and unused for a long period of time.
What part of speech is collect dust?
Collect dust is a verb.
What is the past tense of collect dust?
The past tense of collect dust is collected dust.

Words near collect dust in the dictionary

  1. colleagueships
  2. colleaguing
  3. collect
  4. collect call
  5. collect calls
  6. collect dust
  7. collect like infinity stones
  8. collect on delivery
  9. collect one's thoughts
  10. collect one's wits
  11. collect oneself

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: collect dust (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-collect dust.ogg.

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