kick up dust

present singular third person kicks up dust · participle present kicking up dust · participle past kicked up dust · past kicked up dust · alternative kick up a dust

1. To cause the air to become filled with dust from a surface.

   The new lane was flat and smooth, allowing cars and trucks to go faster and kick up dust.

   2007, Jim Sterba, Frankie's Place: A Love Story, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   Schneider maintains that water-assisted sweeping equipment helps keep dust down, except in new construction areas where it seems to kick up dust, but he'll compensate by turning up the water.

   2003, Stormwater: The Journal for Surface Water Quality Professionals

   Anyway, they would step up to the firing line, carefully take aim, and kick up dust all around the target but seldom come close to the bull's eye.

   2012, Jerry McKee Bullock, Life’s Like That: An Old Texan Looks at Life, →ISBN, page 98

2. To make a fuss.

   Shanghai Kelly has been kicking up dust about the war on the crimps and boardinghouse keepers.

   1930, James Dalessandro, 1906 - a Novel

   3 more examples

   He kicked up dust about how we really didn't have our facts straight regarding his allegedly loaded gloves.

   2011, Gary Andrew Poole, PacMan, →ISBN

   She was certain she was about to kick up dust about her mother just as Setsuka had done about Mitsu's death eighteen years ago.

   2011, Falling Rain, Ouroboros: Road of Legend, →ISBN, page 318

   On he went to the international accounts, where he vapored over the balance of payments accounts, kicked up dust about foreign investment in the United States and US investment abroad, and gasconaded over the US international debt position.

   2015, Larry Moran, Laughing through Life, →ISBN