rusty

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹʌsti/
• Rhymes: -ʌsti

From Middle English rusty, from Old English rustiġ (“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”, 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 40817384:

     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.

5. Affected with the fungal plant disease called rust.

• ride rusty
• rusty nail
• Rusty (nickname)
• turn rusty

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