kick up dust

English

Verb

kick up dust (third-person singular simple present kicks up dust, present participle kicking up dust, simple past and past participle kicked up dust)

1. To cause the air to become filled with dust from a surface.
   • 2003, Stormwater: The Journal for Surface Water Quality Professionals:

     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.

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

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

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

     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.

2. (transitive with about or over) To make a fuss about something trivial or noncontroversial.
   • 1930, James Dalessandro, 1906 - a Novel:

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

   • 2011, Gary Andrew Poole, PacMan, →ISBN:

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

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

     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.

   • 2015, Larry Moran, Laughing through Life, →ISBN:

     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.

Translations

to cause the air to become filled with dust

• German: Staub aufwirbeln (de)

to make a fuss about something trivial

• German: viel Wirbel machen