feather duster
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of feather duster
First recorded in 1855–60
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It’s an arresting image that signals the production’s bold, stylized approach to this canonical text, often treated as an antique that requires only a feather duster to be brought back to life.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 10, 2026
Don’t use a feather duster or anything similar that stirs up dust, Filippelli said.
From Seattle Times • Apr. 15, 2024
The “hair” sprouting off this branch resembles a downy feather duster or fluffy tuft of cotton—maybe even fragments of a bad white wig.
From Scientific American • Dec. 7, 2021
The feather duster is a goose that lays golden eggs; the ladder, the tower from which Rapunzel lets down her hair; the curtain rod, a support for the dresses worn by Cinderella’s hardhearted Stepsisters.
From Washington Post • Dec. 11, 2016
I said, “In between spring and fall, and fall and spring, ma’am, you just s’posed to sweep and mop and use the feather duster and like that.”
From "Cold Sassy Tree" by Olive Ann Burns
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
