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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Pooh-Bah
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Never heard a name for them before. Perhaps it's a left bank thing! How about "a coagulation of accumulated detritus"?
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That sounds like the coad name for them.......
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Pooh-Bah
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And of course, a coad in da dose bakes you sdeeze.
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Carpal Tunnel
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it seems that the term 'bunny' has been overloaded; here's one such usage:
Obs.
[perh. a. OF. bugne, beugne, var. forms of bigne, a swelling caused by a blow; cf. boine (dial.) under BOIN v.; also BUNION.]
A lump, hump, or swelling; spec. a soft watery swelling on the joints of animals.
dust lumps??
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stranger
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poor bunnies, getting blamed and named for all ills. anyone remember the horrer flik "Night of the Lupis"?
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Thanks for the link, Fr. Steve. Mine is in the shape of a house, but the sentiment is the same. It's nice to know where I can get another should I decide to gift someone. 
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Those were the good old days. A local independent TV station screened a really bad sci fi or horror film every Friday night and called the program "Creature Feature." One developed a whole vocabulary of B-film references. And "The Night of the Lepus" contributed mightily to it. The premise was one popular in 1972: science producing unintended negative consequences. A rancher hires two scientists to inoculate the wild rabbits, who are annoying his cattle, with something that will make them stop breeding. Instead, the elixir makes them 25 feet tall and carnivorous. "In order to facilitate their growth, the rabbits need extra protein, and what better source than the relatively slow-moving human population that surrounds their huge subterranean lairs?" ~ New York Times. The best part of the whole movie is the "special effects" in which real bunnies are filmed in slow motion, trampling balsa-wood replicas of farmhouses and towns. One doubts that the producers had quite as much audience laughter in mind as is produced by these scenes. An amazing thing about "Lepus" was the number of well-known actors in it: Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, DeForest Kelley, and Paul Fix. Officer Lopez: "Attention! Attention! Ladies and gentlemen, attention! There is a herd of killer rabbits headed this way and we desperately need your help!" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069005/P.S. lepus = Latin for hare. The scientific name of the black-tailed jack rabbit is Lepus californicus.
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well-known actors … : Stuart Whitman
Who?
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Stuart Whitman appeared in over a hundred movies. He started out with bit parts in sci-fi movies of the fifties like "When Worlds Collide" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still." It is fun to recognize him in these minor roles, as a fellow who later played leading parts. He appeared in "Ten North Frederick" in 1958, in "Murder Incorporated" in 1960, in "The Longest Day" in 1962, in "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines in 1965, and in about six jillion made-for-TV movies and TV series. You'd recognize him. http://www.thegoldenyears.org/whitman.html
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You'd recognize him.
I know that's not him on the left. That's Jennifer Anniston. So is he the one in the middle or the one on the right?
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Whitman was also nominated for an Academy Award for best actor in a leading role for his part in "The Mark" in 1961.
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