beat the dust

English

Verb

beat the dust (third-person singular simple present beats the dust, present participle beating the dust, simple past beat the dust, past participle beaten the dust or (colloquial) beat the dust)

1. To take in too little ground with the forelegs, as a horse.
2. (idiomatic) To perform curvets too precipitately or too low.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “beat the dust”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)