dusty
/ˈdʌsti/
dusty adjective: covered with dust.
Adjective
dusty (comparative dustier, superlative dustiest)
- Covered with dust.
- a dusty carpet
- On a cold morning in Abilene, Texas, a column of 18-wheelers crawls down bumpy, waterlogged roads, past cattle grazing on dusty shrubs.2025 December 11, Charlie Campbell, Andrew R. Chow and Billy Perrigo, “The Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year”, in Time
- Synonyms:
- dust-ridden
- Powdery and resembling dust.
- Grey or greyish.
- a dusty peach color
- Old; outdated; stuffily traditional.
- The very smart practitioners of my acquaintance do not rest their right hand on old dusty knowledge, but bend and move along a ground of being in which they are perpetually on the lookout for what is trusty and true, new and old.2018, Mark A. Kunkel, Allegories for Psychotherapy, Teaching, and Supervision, page 208
- Ugly, disgusting (a general term of abuse).
- Ugly, unwell, inadequate, bad.
- ...the toilet-glass on the table...had probably reflected few such faces as that of the lady calling herself Mrs. Lloyd, who looked attentively into it when she found herself alone and decided that she was not so very dusty, considering1868, Edmund Yates, The Rock Ahead: A Novel, page 21
- One morning, I said to a patient: "How are you today, Mrs. White?" And she replied "Not so dusty - quite well brushed."1967, “Jewish Affairs”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), volume 22, page 30
Noun
dusty (plural dusties)
- A medium-brown color.
- The orange shades ranged from brilliant to soft; pinks from delicate little-girl hues to strong dusties; yellows were soft buttermilks to ochre; reds ran from scarlets to bloods;1973, Vogue - Volume 162, page 210
- I chose small floral prints for the garden area and broke them into lights, mediums, dark mediums, and darks, in other words, pastels, dusties, dark dusties, and jewel tones (refer to the Montano Color chart, page 35).2016, Judith Baker Montano, Judith Baker Montano's Essential Stitch Guide, page 156
- An old bottle of spirits that has been kept for a long time.
- A lighter, less expensive version—The White Label—was taken off the market in 2016. But dusties can still be found.2018, Carlo DeVito, Big Whiskey, page 165
- A miller (from the image of millers being covered in flour dust).
- I do not like to see too much strife between dusties on the short and long system question, as it is liable to cause hard feelings.1895, “Operatives Should Proceed to Organize”, in American Miller, volume 23, page 448
- It is designed to do scalping and grading in a way to satiffy the most fastidious of dusties.1898 February, “The Great Western Rotary Bolter”, in The Roller Mill, volume 16, page 437
- A supply petty officer.
- The mess was so overcrowded that hammock-slinging space became the perks of the badgemen the “jack-dusties” invariably slept in their store-rooms and offices.1982, Ray Sturtivant, Fleet Air Arm at War, page 14
- The 'Dusties' — supply Petty Officers were frantically pumping out the kit, gas masks, kit bags, blankets, army boots, toilet bags, socks, underclothes.1992, J. W. MacKintosh, The Hunts and the Hunted, page 10
- A recording of music from another era, especially R&B; an oldie.
- In Los Angeles, listeners can tune in to KACE, the "dusties" station that plays music from the '50s, '60s and '70s;1995 June 3, Janine McAdams, “On the Radio”, in Billboard, volume 107, number 22, page 34
- WGCI 1390 - AM was previously known for playing R & B oldies known as "dusties".1999, Ed Hogan, Gospel Synergy Magazine - Volume 1, Issue 3, page 10
- An old person, especially one who is unwilling to change with the times.
- United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on Agriculture--Environmental and Consumer Protection Appropriations1973, In other words, he apparently wanted to shock people into action, action against his enemies, the "dusties" as he calls them., Agriculture-environmental and Consumer Protection Appropriations...
- Max and Fizz both felt resentful and indignant: how dare any stupid oldie obscure their happiness by dreary talk of pennies and pensions; how dare the dusties link love with security, matrimony with mortgages, pleasure with prams?2013, Shirley Conran, The Revenge
- A person of mixed race who has a swarthy complexion.
- There are scarcely any Indo-Europeans of pure blood in Peru, for with the exception of pure Indians in the interior, the population consists of mestizos, Zambos, mulattoes, terceroones, terceroones, quadroons, cholos, musties, fusties, and dusties; crosses between Spaniards and negroes, Spaniards...1914, Alfred Paul Karl Eduard Schultz, Race Or Mongrel, page 157
- Ashy niggas and dusties went everywhere, forgetting about looking dap.1995, Ricardo Cortez Cruz, Five Days of Bleeding: A Novel, page 68
- A migrant farmer from the dustbowl.
- And pretty much the same time, you started to hear about dusties down in states like California and Arizona: farmers who'd had to leave their farms because of drought, people in towns with no more water.2017, Chris Beckett, America City
- A dustman.
- One Council put that principle into practice some five years ago when it changed from a refuse collection system employing its own 'dusties' to one based upon tenders from private contractors.1984, Local Authority Management - Volume 10, Issue 2, page 36
- His neighbours persist in this behaviour: they dump their unfinished dinners (molten broccoli? the stewed remains of infidels?) in unofficial bags the dusties shun.2003, Geoff Cochrane, Vanilla Wine, page 61
- A duststorm.
- […] dust storms, does it? Well, nothing like what it used to have: One spring the dusties blew so thick We staked five claims above Clay Crick Fifty foot high in the fallow air. Blows lots worse on the prairie.1952, American Heritage
- A clump of dust; a dust bunny.
- Sparse iron gray hair, stuck on his egg-shaped head like dusties from the vacuum bag, cold pewter eyes in little round metal-rimmed glasses, a sharp, hard nose, a mouth like a slot.1988, Nora Johnson, Uncharted Places, page 273
- His room was airy with a slight breeze gently blowing in from the top portion of the two-part window which was that had been left ajar for the purpose of refreshing and clearing the dusties.2011, O. M. James, Uncomfortable Silence, page 94
Proper noun (1) capitalized: Dusty
Dusty
- A diminutive of the male given name Dustin.
Proper noun (2) capitalized: Dusty
Dusty
dusty meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
dusty in Hindi
- धूलभरी
dusty in Tamil
- தூள் நிறைந்த
dusty in Marathi
- धुळीसकट
dusty in Urdu
- گرد آلود, غبار آلود, خاکی
More languagesFewer languages
- dusty in Malayalam
- പൊടി poṭi
- dusty in Kannada
- ಧೂಳಿನಿಂದ ಕೂಡಿದೆ, ಧೂಳಿನಿಂದ ಕೂಡಿದ
- dusty in Gujarati
- ધૂળભર્યું, ધૂળભરી
- dusty in Odia
- ଧୂଳି dhuḷi, ଧୂସର dhusara
- dusty in Sanskrit
- रजस्य rajasyà
- dusty in Malay
- berhabuk
- dusty in Indonesian
- berdebu
- dusty in Vietnamese
- bụi bặm
Examples of dusty in a sentence
- I've been a dusty in sixteen mills […] I'd like to hear from other dusties on this subject of a long and a short system milling and how they clean up well.1904, The Northwestern Miller, page 491:
- nice old scratchy records that had been played over and over again, I called them "dusty records," reasoning that it was the dust in the grooves from being around so long that made them crackle.2009 February 1, Herb Kent, David Smallwood, Mayor Richard M. Daley, The Cool Gent: The Nine Lives of Radio Legend Herb Kent, Chicago...
Synonyms of dusty
Forms of dusty
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | dustier |
| superlative | dustiest |
| Noun | |
| plural | dusties |
Origin of dusty
From Middle English dusty, dusti, from Old English dūstiġ, dystiġ, dȳstiġ (“dusty”), equivalent to dust + -y. Cognate with Dutch donzig (“cottony, downy, woolly”), German dunstig (“hazy, misty”).
Derived from Dustin.
Derived from dusty, from the tendency of persons engaged in the milling of flour to become covered with flour dust.
Words formed from dusty
Phrases with dusty
Words that rhyme with dusty
Questions about dusty
- What does dusty mean?
- Dusty means covered with dust.
- What is dusty in Hindi?
- Dusty in Hindi is धूलभरी. See Dusty meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use dusty in a sentence?
- I've been a dusty in sixteen mills […] I'd like to hear from other dusties on this subject of a long and a short system milling and how they clean up well.
- What part of speech is dusty?
- Dusty can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce dusty?
- Dusty is pronounced /ˈdʌsti/.
Words near dusty in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dusty (page history and authors); Dusty (page history and authors); dusty (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dusty (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dusty (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dusty (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); പൊടി (Malayalam) (page history and authors); dusty (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dusty (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ଧୂଳି (Odia) (page history and authors); रजस्य (Sanskrit) (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-us-dusty.ogg.
Cite this entry: “dusty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dusty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.