The word 'dust' is kinda peculiar. The verb form dust means to remove the dust from something, not to add dust to it. Is there a term for this type of word relationship and are there other examples?
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1It's not a noun-verb issue, but the logic of shorthand speech. Pitted prunes have pits out, and baby formula is made with no infant ingredients. However, Amelia Bedelia, too, experienced these challenges and often got stuck. – Yosef Baskin Jan 23 '22 at 22:23
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1Interesting! Skin, fleece, gut, husk, shell, paunch (sort of), louse (obsolete), er... behead (sounds like the opposite of de-head!). I haven't found a name for them. – Old Brixtonian Jan 23 '22 at 22:26
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2You can dust a cake with very finely ground sugar. – Michael Harvey Jan 23 '22 at 22:49
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@MichaelHarvey So then, context matters? – Yosef Baskin Jan 23 '22 at 23:48
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2The verb dust means to remove dust, just as the verb skin means to remove skin, the verb milk means remove milk, and the verb core means to remove a core. These are called Privative verbs; there are also Provisional verbs, like roof, fence, and water, which mean to add these things, instead of removing them like Privative verbs. All of these verbs come from nouns, but there are many different ways to make a verb out of a noun. – John Lawler Jan 24 '22 at 01:36
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1See https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=dust. Also, dusters remove dust but may apply some kind of dust—think of crop dusters. – Xanne Jan 24 '22 at 04:24
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2Does this answer your question? Why is the verb "dust" used in opposite forms? We've even got a tag for the linguistic phenomenon involved - *auto-antonyms*. See also Dust vs. Undust? – FumbleFingers Jan 24 '22 at 12:24
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@John Lawler: Thanks for that. – Old Brixtonian Jan 25 '22 at 22:31