Word.ws English Dictionary

turn to dust

turn to dust verb: to die or disappear.

Verb

turn to dust (third-person singular simple present turns to dust, present participle turning to dust, simple past and past participle turned to dust)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To die or disappear.
    • If I lost my dreams
      Could I keep your trust
      Promise that our love
      Would not turn to dust1996, Neil Diamond, If I Lost My Way
    • Now he threatens to walk away from Ukraine altogether, impatient to get a deal in time for his 100th-day celebrations on Tuesday. That’s typical too: so often Trump’s grand plans turn to dust because, if he doesn’t get an instant reward, he gets bored and drifts away.2025 April 25, Jonathan Freedland, “Ukraine has exposed Trump’s true identity: as a vandal, an autocrat, a gangster and a fool”, in The Guardian

Forms of turn to dust

third-person singular presentturns to dust
present participleturning to dust
past participleturned to dust
pastturned to dust

Questions about turn to dust

What does turn to dust mean?
Turn to dust means to die or disappear.
What part of speech is turn to dust?
Turn to dust is a verb.
What is the past tense of turn to dust?
The past tense of turn to dust is turned to dust.

Words near turn to dust in the dictionary

  1. turn the trick
  2. turn the turtle
  3. turn to
  4. turn to account
  5. turn to custard
  6. turn to dust
  7. turn to good account
  8. turn together
  9. turn traitor
  10. turn tricks
  11. turn Turk

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: turn to 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-turn to dust.ogg.

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