Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Covered or filled with dust.
  • adjective Consisting of or resembling dust; powdery.
  • adjective Tinged with gray.
  • adjective Timeworn; stale.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Filled, covered, or sprinkled with dust; reduced to dust; clouded with dust: as, a dusty road; dusty matter; dusty windows.
  • Like dust; of the hue of dust; clouded: as, a dusty white or red.
  • Covered with minute, dust-like scales, as the wings of a butterfly.
  • In botany, covered with granulations simulating dust.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Filled, covered, or sprinkled with dust; clouded with dust; ; also, reducing to dust.
  • adjective Like dust; of the color of dust.
  • adjective (Bot.) a plant (Cineraria maritima); -- so called because of the ashy-white coating of its leaves.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Covered with dust.
  • adjective powdery and resembling dust
  • adjective gray/grey in parts

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective covered with a layer of dust
  • adjective lacking originality or spontaneity; no longer new

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

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").

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Examples

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  • Spotted in a "no dusties allowed" phrase, where "dusty" apparently means a man who isn't marriage material, or who can't provide for a woman, or who is full of empty promises.

    January 24, 2024