Dusty

How to spell dusty

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dusty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dusty mean?

1. adjectiveCovered with or full of dust.

Dusty in a sentence

• The attic was full of dusty boxes nobody had opened in years.

• She wiped a dusty shelf before placing the new books on it.

Where does dusty come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word descends from the Old English noun dust, meaning fine dry particles of earth or other matter, which belonged to a wider Germanic family of words for powder and chaff. To turn that noun into a descriptive adjective, English added the native suffix -y, which has long been used to mean 'full of' or 'covered with', as in 'sandy' or 'muddy'. By the medieval period 'dusty' was firmly established to describe surfaces coated in dust or air thick with it. The spelling is refreshingly honest: it is simply the familiar word dust with a plain -y on the end, so the only thing to remember is that no extra letter creeps in between the two parts.

How the word is built

• dust (fine dry powder)
• -y (adjective suffix: full of, covered with)