rusty

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹʌsti/

  • Audio (Southern England):

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• Rhymes: -ʌsti

From Middle English rusty, from Old English rūstiġ (“rusty”), from Proto-Germanic *rustagaz (“rusty”), equivalent to rust +‎ -y. Cognate with Saterland Frisian rusterch (“rusty”), West Frisian rustich, roastich (“rusty”), Dutch roestig (“rusty”), German Low German rusterig, rüsterig (“rusty”), German rostig (“rusty”), Swedish rostig (“rusty”).

rusty (comparative rustier, superlative rustiest)

1. Marked or corroded by rust. [from 9th c.]
2. Of the rust color, reddish or reddish-brown. [from 14th c.]
   • 1855, Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, section XIV:

     Alive? he might be dead for aught I know, / With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, / And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;

   • 1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter I (Anarchy), pages 377–378:

     Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with […] on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs.

3. Lacking recent experience, out of practice, especially with respect to a skill or activity. [from 16th c.]
   • 2010 December 29, Sam Sheringham, “Liverpool 0-1 Wolverhampton”, in BBC:

     Before the match, Hodgson had expressed the hope that his players would be fresh rather than rusty after an 18-day break from league commitments because of two successive postponements.

4. (now chiefly historical) Of clothing, especially dark clothing: worn, shabby. [from 17th c.]
   • 1911, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson:

     He wore a black jacket, rusty and amorphous.

   • 1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC:

     The clerk stared at him and the rusty black bonnet a moment, and then laughed.

5. Affected with the fungal plant disease called rust.

Ellipsis of rusty one more often used for this, or from the general epithet rusty given to various particular firearm names—earlier both was applied in Cockney rhyming slang for other machines, including swords in their day, but the present coinage has not more than a loose connection to this and is from the preference for used or antique firearms due to their being easier or cheaper to obtain.

rusty (uncountable)

1. (MLE, slang) A gun or in particular an old or worn one.
   • 2014 August 25, Dimzy of 67 (lyrics and music), “Outside”‎^[1], 1:29–1:35:

     My angles dusty, two black hands on the rusty
     And I got uck from a peng ting, mad back but the chest busty

Variant form of resty; compare also reasty.

rusty (comparative more rusty, superlative most rusty)

1. Discolored and rancid; reasty. [from 16th c.]

   rusty bacon

• Tyrus, yurts

• rosty, rousty, rowsty, ruste, rusti, ruysty
• rustiȝ (Early Middle English)

From Old English rustiġ; equivalent to rust +‎ -y.

• IPA^(key): /ˈrustiː/, /ˈruːstiː/

rusty

1. rusty, rusted
2. degenerate, uncouth
3. (rare) rust-coloured
4. (rare) unpolished, jarring

• English: rusty
• Scots: roosty, rousty
• Yola: roostha, roosta, roosthaa

• “rū̆stī, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.