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stranger
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OP
stranger
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Anyone know the origin of the term "dust bunny" or "dust bunnies". Earliest printed use I can find is in a magazine article in Psychology Today, Vol. 22, December 1988, by Paul Chance. I have searched every dictionary at home and on-line with little success.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Better to go to wordorigins to get an authoritative answer to this question: http://p098.ezboard.com/bwordoriginsorgNot that you won't have fun here. Stick around and enjoy the zoo.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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MWCD (which can be found online) dates it from 1966, if that's any help. (they have yet to make their citation files available to the public.)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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What do you call the big clumps of dust that gather under furniture and in corners? a. dust bunnies (71.92%) b. dust kittens (0.32%) c. dust mice (0.98%) d. kitties (0.31%) e. dust balls (21.35%) f. other (5.12%) (10616 respondents) http://cfprod01.imt.uwm.edu/Dept/FLL/linguistics/dialect/staticmaps/q_72.html
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Carpal Tunnel
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dr. bill writes: 80 years ago, when vacuum cleaners were not common, and didn't have hoses to reach under beds, lint would accumulate, and drafts caused by opening doors would roll a layer of lint into little elongated balls that looked a bit like mice, especially when a draft moved them. I remember my mother calling them 'dust mice' when I was quite small.
this suggests that perhaps dust mice came first and eventually evolved into bunnies as more raw material became available for their feeding.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I just looked under the bed in the guest bedroom and I think that Dust Godzilla has taken up residence there.
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stranger
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stranger
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Thanks to all who responded to my query about dust bunnies. Gives me a few more places to look as this search, like the dust bunnies themselves, has taken a life of its own and has become a quest.
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addict
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addict
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If you have dust mice, do you eventually get dust kitties to hunt them? Under MY bed is a federally protected dust bunny habitat!
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addict
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addict
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We've always called them dust balls, and we name them when they reach a certain size . A friend [?] gave me a small ceramic plaque that says, "This house protected by killer dust balls."
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