rusty

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹʌsti/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌsti

Etymology 1

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”).

Adjective

rusty (comparative rustier, superlative rustiest)

1. Marked or corroded by rust.
2. Of the rust color, reddish or reddish-brown.
   • 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, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter I, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915, →OCLC:

     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.
   • 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.
   • 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.

Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 2

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.

Noun

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”‎, 1:29–1:35:

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

Etymology 3

Variant form of resty; compare also reasty.

Adjective

rusty (comparative more rusty, superlative most rusty)

1. Discolored and rancid; reasty.

   rusty bacon

Anagrams

• Tyrus, yurts

Middle English

Alternative forms

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

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈrustiː/, /ˈruːstiː/

Adjective

rusty

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

Descendants

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

References

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