can something be both dusty and damp?

[alpacinou]

Hello.

Can something be both dusty and damp? Is this sentence correct?

The boxes I found in the storage were dusty and smelled of damp.

I thought for a second that when dust settles on something, maybe the smell of damp goes away.

 

[emsr2d2]

Things can certainly be both damp and dusty.

 

[Tarheel]

Things can certainly be both damp and dusty.

But water will turn the dust to mud.

Alpacinoutd, I think the word you are looking for is musty (for the smell).

 

[Tdol]

Or fusty.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Things can certainly be both damp and dusty.

No.

They can be musty (that is, smelling of mold), but they can't be dusty.

 

[emsr2d2]

Sadly, I can assure you from bitter experience that things can get damp, remain damp and also have a layer of dust on top of them.

 

[tedmc]

I think it is only natural that a powdery material like dust when comes into contact with moisture invariably absorbs water through capillary action and becomes moist or damp, just as earth would. If it is damp, it is no longer dust.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Sadly, I can assure you from bitter experience that things can get damp, remain damp and also have a layer of dust on top of them.

Ugh! No details, please!

 

[tedmc]

This is not a question of English but of science and logic. How can you have dust on a damp surface? Can you have "damp dust"?

 

[emsr2d2]

Because damp isn't the same as wet. Sometimes something damp might just feel cold to the touch. It doesn't have to be wet enough to actually mix with dust to make a sort of mushy mess (it would never be called "mud").

 

[probus]

A google search returns several results for each of "damp and dusty" and "dusty and damp". Oddly enough, the Corpus of Contemporary American English seems to contain neither. Perhaps I'm using the CoCA wrong.

 

[emsr2d2]

I was surprised that CoCA didn't come up with anything. Ngram, however, gives many hits for "damp and dusty" but nowhere near as many for "dusty and damp".

However, bear in mind that certain words not appearing many times in a string on either CoCA or Ngram doesn't mean they don't provide a grammatical sentence when used. Imagine that I have a shiny small car that's red and green with purple spots. It's perfectly reasonable for me to say "I've got a small, shiny, red and green and purple-spotted car". If you put "small, shiny, red and green and purple-spotted" into CoCA, I doubt you'd get any results at all. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with my sentence.