Rust

How to spell rust

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rust

What does rust mean?

1. nounThe reddish-brown coating that forms on iron or steel when it reacts with moisture and air.
2. verbTo corrode and form a reddish coating, or to deteriorate from lack of use.
3. nounA fungal disease of plants that produces reddish or brownish spots on leaves and stems.

Rust in a sentence

• noun

  Flakes of rust had eaten through the bottom of the old gate.

• verb

  Cheap garden chairs tend to rust within a single wet season.

• noun

  The wheat crop was ruined by an outbreak of rust across the fields.

• noun

  A layer of rust covered the tools left out in the rain.

• verb

  Language skills can rust quickly when you stop practising them.

• noun

  Gardeners spray roses to protect them from black spot and rust.

Where does rust come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Rust comes straight from the Old English word 'rust', which already meant the reddish coating that forms on iron when it is exposed to damp air. It belongs to a broad Germanic family, with close relatives in Dutch 'roest' and German 'Rost', and all of these trace back to an ancient root meaning 'red'. That colour link is no accident: the same root lies behind the words 'red' and 'ruddy', and the early speakers simply named the substance after its rusty colour. Because the word is native English rather than a borrowing, its spelling has stayed short and phonetic, with no silent letters or foreign quirks to trip anyone up. The figurative sense, that skills can 'rust' from disuse, grew naturally from the literal idea of metal decaying when neglected.

How the word is built

• rust (a single Old English root word; no prefix or suffix)