I actually felt like playing house today and had the energy to do it, so I dry mopped then wet mopped the floor and dedusted all hard surfaces.
Yes, I know — dedusted is not a word, but it should be. The way the word stands, “dust” as a verb is the opposite of itself. For example, when snow dusts the ground, it means that a light coating of snow was deposited on the ground. Some cookie recipes require you to dust the finished cookie with powdered sugar, which means to putting a light coating of sugar on the cookie. I dusted today, but I did not leave a coating of dust on the ground. In fact, the rooms were already dusted with a powdering of dirt particles. So, see? When I cleaned off that dusting, I dedusted. If I had redusted, then I could say I dusted the room, but I didn’t add another layer of dust; I removed what was there.
Look at it a different way: if you bug a room, you place electronic bugs in the room. If you debug the room, you remove the bugs. If you code a text, you put that text into code. If you decode it, then you remove the code to reveal the plain text. If you clutter a room . . . You see where I am going with this.
It is interesting to me though, that a whole slew of words mean the opposite of themselves, not just “dust,” as I pointed out here, but “cleave,” which means both to cling and to unite and “trim” which means to add something or remove something. In fact, there are so many such autoantonyms, they have their own category name: contranyms.
I just realized that spell checker didn’t underline dedust, so I looked it up, and lo and behold, it is a word, and means exactly what I said it should — to remove fine particles and to free something of dust. Who knew? Not me, obviously, because I thought I was being so very clever and whimsical. The truth sort of puts the kibosh on this whole essay, but I’m posting it anyway because whether I dusted or dedusted, the house is clean.
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Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.
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January 9, 2022 at 4:54 pm
My son and I discussed this as we were making dinner the other day. I asked him to dethaw the chicken, and he said that should mean putting thawed chicken in the freezer. Neat to know that these English language errors have a name. Fun post.
January 9, 2022 at 5:45 pm
I’m laughing at your conversation with your son. Clever!
January 9, 2022 at 6:46 pm
In my case, “dusting”, or “redusting” might be a more accurate word than “dedusting”. It seems that irrespective of frequency, the activity inevitably results in the same dust in the same places. Whoever wrote “dust to dust” has clearly dusted.
January 9, 2022 at 9:10 pm
I never used to dust — I thought it was ridiculous because it just went into the air and eventually settled back, but now with the dusters that pick up the dust, it makes more sense. Bu for sure . . . dust to dust.
January 10, 2022 at 2:32 pm
I am not quite good with linguistic like my soulmate. It is always interesting playing with words and vocabularies. I think de came from Latin and old French. Actually I have lots of different kind of health problems. (I hope it is not serious) If I can dedusted with all it will become de dusted (de-dusted or dedusted).
January 10, 2022 at 4:58 pm
I’ve always enjoyed playing with words, too, as you can probably tell from this blog.