adjective
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covered with or involving dust
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like dust in appearance or colour
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(of a colour) tinged with grey; pale
dusty pink
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an unhelpful or bad-tempered reply
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informal not too bad; fairly well: often in response to the greeting how are you?
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of dusty
Middle English word dating back to 1175–1225; see origin at dust, -y 1
Explanation
When you call something dusty, it's either literally covered in dust or so old and unoriginal that it might as well be. You can use a feather duster to clean off dusty surfaces, but if something is a dusty color, that just means it's got a grayish tint to it, like dusty pink or dusty blue. If something has been around for a really long time and it's worn-out, stale, or unoriginal, you can also call it dusty. If you're a stand up comedian whose been working the same act for thirty years, chances are your jokes are getting a little dusty.
Vocabulary lists containing dusty
Two-Faced Words: Contronyms
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Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -y
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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.
See Examples For:
The coronagraph is designed to demonstrate advanced technologies that suppress the brilliant light from stars so scientists can study much fainter planets and dusty disks orbiting nearby stars.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 2, 2026
Her memories of favorite foods has remained intact, like images preserved in a dusty family album.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2026
Senhor José posits various reasons of his own—loneliness, a wish for change, a belief that he can save her from dusty obscurity—and the novel takes on the form of his mental equivocations.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
She didn’t bring goggles or even a big coat to survive the cold, dusty nights.
From Salon ● Sep. 11, 2026
In summer it’s plain yellow dirt, so dusty I could taste it.
From "The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs" by Betty G. Birney
The other issue here is Verstappen was ahead at the apex, slightly, only because he had braked later than Norris, despite being on the dustier inside line where there would be less grip.
From BBC ● Oct. 22, 2024
As California’s largest lake has continued to evaporate, it’s become saltier and dustier, causing breathing problems for locals like Clark.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2024
If that conclusion is confirmed, it suggests the early universe was much dustier than previously thought.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 1, 2023
Hallar’s data show the south-central region of the state where the May storm originated is getting dustier by about 2 percent per year.
From Scientific American ● May 10, 2023
And as she spoke, she saw it, among the shelves of smaller, cheaper, dustier wares.
From "Impossible Creatures" by Katherine Rundell
Astronomers posit that the most massive aging stars also might be the dustiest.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 9, 2025
Another Grann specialty is on full display — creating a cast of indelible characters from the dustiest of sources: 18th century ship’s logs, surgeons’ textbooks, court-martial proceedings.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 14, 2023
The bottom of my purse is the dustiest environment in the world, and I don’t love the main screen’s chances against my toddler if he ever got ahold of it.
From The Verge ● Aug. 17, 2022
"These sites are becoming dustier and dustier, and last year was by far the dustiest year of our study," Blakowski asserted in an interview with Salon.
From Salon ● Jul. 29, 2022
Jordan College was scoured from the dustiest box-room to the darkest cellar, and so were Gabriel and St. Michael’s, till the heads of all the colleges issued a joint protest asserting their ancient rights.
From "The Golden Compass" by Philip Pullman
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
