Word.ws English Dictionary

dustup

/ˈdʌstʌp/

dustup noun: a scuffle or fight.

Noun

dustup (plural dustups)

  1. (informal) A scuffle or fight.
    • Mik looked at his arm and knew this wouldn't work for another dustup with the she-hemoth that was hot on his heels. He put his shield on the damaged arm. It felt strange since he usually wore it on his left.2014 September 9, Patrick M. Robbins, Supergatory, iUniverse, →ISBN
  2. (broadly, informal) An argument or dispute.
    • The incident followed other dustups between the two parties over the conduct of the war on terrorism.2005 June 21, Seattle Times
    • “Look at us. I plumb forgot what this dustup's even about. Now, what I'm-what I'm... what I'm trying to say here is, hoo, boy, we all need to stop fightin'.”2020 September 27, Christy Stratton & Jeremy Rowley, “Violet's Secret” (18:18 from the start), in Bless the Harts, season 2, episode 1, spoken by Wayne Edwards (Ike Barinholtz)

Synonyms of dustup

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of dustup

Forms of dustup

pluraldustups
alternative formdust-up
alternative formdust up

Origin of dustup

Deverbal from dust up.

Questions about dustup

What does dustup mean?
Dustup means a scuffle or fight.
What part of speech is dustup?
Dustup is a noun.
How do you pronounce dustup?
Dustup is pronounced /ˈdʌstʌp/ (US).
What is the plural of dustup?
The plural of dustup is dustups.

Words near dustup in the dictionary

  1. dustsheets
  2. duststorm
  3. duststorms
  4. dustuck
  5. dustucks
  6. dustup
  7. dustups
  8. dusturies
  9. dustury
  10. dustwhirl
  11. dustwhirls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dustup (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-dustup.wav.

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