Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A light sprinkling: sidewalks covered with a dusting of new snow.
- n. Slang A beating or defeat: gave the bully a good dusting.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The act of casting dust or powder upon anything; specifically, in ceramics, sprinkling over the damp, unburned clay, through a canvas bag, powdered lead or galena, which in the kiln will fuse into a glaze. This method of lead-glazing was employed in England for common red pottery. See lead-glaze and plumbiferous, 2.
- n. The act of brushing the dust from a surface, as of a table, chair, floor, etc.
Wiktionary
Examples
“DROPPINGS Turkey droppings are easiest to find on bare ground, especially in dusting areas or in scratchings.”
“So while the Democratic establishment is once again dusting off its tried-and-untrue swing voter strategy, Dean is running, as he put it, a campaign based on addition, not subtraction.”
“This not unusual, but recently I have begun to note that the bottom lip of the urinals are covered with a thin dusting of pubic hair.”
“The thin dusting of snow has become crackling ice here in Belgium, it’s VERY very cold today and it’s going to be as cold for the rest of the week.”
“There is enough instability to foster snow flurries 30% chance but a dusting should be the max as moisture is in short supply.”
“As a result, museums are becoming more comfortable with the idea of dusting off their fakes and forgeries and hanging them on the wall to demonstrate the incredible lengths to which great forgers will go to pull the wool over the art world's eyes.”
“The cotton gloves, too, were offensive, as were also the thick shoes which had been dusted; but the dusting was the great sin.”
“We must give up the idea of dusting pasture so there will be no ticks there, so that pirolasmosis will not occur, and so forth, and we must fight to wipe out ticks, fight to wipe out ticks.”
“Then she took to the idea of dusting off the variety genre in 2008 -- but to disastrous results on NBC.”
“But she expressed a lack of faith in National Weather Service forecasts, especially after a significant snowfall Sunday night that the weather service described as a dusting even as it was piling up on streets.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘dusting’.
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Autantonyms
Words that are the opposites of themselves; each of the words in the list below has at least two definitions of which one is the complete contrary of the other.
fast, buckle, weather, out, weedy, overlook, cleave, let, clip, quite, sanction, bolt and 19 more...
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Other duties as assigned.
Tasks which probably won't appear on your job description, but which might still be required of you.
making coffee, locking the door, unlocking the door, color coding, making copies, cubicle decorating, bringing treats f..., explaining the me..., putting things in..., dusting, watering plants, digging through t... and 30 more...
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some-ing
king, offering, blessing, coping, earnings, trappings, breeding, during, offing, refreshing, sitting, outing and 208 more...
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Words for ice and snow
Environmental Ice and Snow
(excluding all the food ice)ice, icicle, frazil, frasil, sleet, slush, snow, flurry, snowfall, freeze, flash-freeze, quick-freeze and 619 more...
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fragile/lovely words
incandescent, scintillating, sublime, stellar, fragile, bones, illuminate, luscious, celestial, crepuscular, penumbra, wanderlust and 111 more...
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Probe~ation
An obnoxious and ridiculous madlib list where verbish '-ing' words fill in the blank wherein the blank is a call for a beating.
For example:
"You're ________in' for a brus...searching, looking, hunting, seeking, questing, exploring, asking, inquiring, snooping, poking, probing, scouting and 262 more...
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writing keywords
"yvonne i can always tell which submissions you've written because you love to use the same words"
blush, bruised, angle, parenthesis, tint, slim, passing, curve, sprawl, tender, clot, slightly and 17 more...
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Contronympho
A list of my most favorite contronyms, words that 'defeat themselves' by having multiple-meanings which contradict. Also called antagonyms, auto-antonyms, autantonyms, Janus words, and self-antony...
over, identify, clear, before, execute, bolt, custom, garnish, left, off, charge, save and 56 more...
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favorite words
diffuse, ameliorate, needlessly, murky, lethargic, opaque, chouette, ambiguous, finesse, verisimilitude, gingerly, delicate and 42 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for dusting.

whichbe A contranym: when dusting furniture, this means "to remove dust from"; but when "dusting for fingerprints", or when used as a noun ("a dusting of snow"), it means respectively "to apply dust" or "the application of dust". (Wikipedia) Jun 6, 2008