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
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.
Just a few doors along is a business called Dusty Gems Interiors, run by Jon Egglestone.
From BBC • May 6, 2026
Dusty plasma includes additional charged dust particles and appears in many environments, from the rings of Saturn to the Earth's ionosphere.
From Science Daily • Apr. 23, 2026
But the hard-nosed Cronin apparently couldn’t reach him while Michigan’s gentler Dusty May could and … hmmmm.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 7, 2026
Sienna Spiro, with her Dusty Springfield glamour, was close behind thanks to the breakout single “Die On This Hill.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 18, 2026
“Yep,” I said, even though I mostly remembered Aunt Leanne and Dusty.
From "Three Little Words: A Memoir" by Ashley Rhodes-Courter
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.
