dust off

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

dust off (third-person singular simple present dusts off, present participle dusting off, simple past and past participle dusted off)

1. (transitive) To remove dust from.
2. (transitive, figurative) To use something after a long time without it.
   • 2019, Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers:

     "If you're accused of profiling or pretextual stops, you can bring your daily logbook to court and document that pulling over motorists for 'stickler' reasons is part of your customary pattern," Remsberg writes, "not a glaring exception conveniently dusted off in the defendant's case."

   • 2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 203:

     For the Pleurotus mycelium to digest the used cigarette butts it might have to dust off an unused metabolic move.

   I think it's time to dust off my old golf clubs, now that I'm retired.

3. (transitive, slang) To jilt or desert (a person).
   • Red Sox by the Numbers

     A “dice girl in a roadside tavern,” she said she shot McNaughton because “he tried to dust me off.”

• dust down

• dust off a batter (baseball)
• dust off the cobwebs