To Dust - To Add or To Remove?

Factual Questions
1

This may be one of those unanswerable questions like why you park on a driveway but drive on a parkway, but why does “dust” mean to both “add a powdery substance” and to “remove a powdery substance”?

According to basic dictionaries, (e.g. here) dust goes both ways:

[list=1]
[li]To remove dust from by wiping, brushing, or beating: dust the furniture. [/li][li]To sprinkle with a powdery substance: dusted the cookies with sugar; dust crops with fertilizer[/li][li]To apply or strew in fine particles: dusted talcum powder on my feet. [/li][/list=1]
Of course, there are also the modern usages of “dust” as in dusting a batter or a helicopter dust off. Although I think both of these cases fall under “applying or generating dust.”

Any etymologist’s out there have a reason for this duality?

2

IANAE but this probably goes back pretty far and since both senses of the word have to do with the same substance, the best you might find are earliest cites as to each usage, but not how they came to be, since these usages probably far predate their appearance in writing.

I must admit I can’t think of another word off the top of my head that means both add and remove the same thing, although the possibilities provide some comic effect.

“John, would you please wallpaper the bathroom this weekend?”
“I’ll cook the chicken as soon as you feather it for me.” (although I think this is usage in French!)

(Always wondered why “take a sh*t” when you’re really leaving one. . . .)

3

Tom and Ray had a Puzzler once to try to find words that are their own antonyms. They started with cleave and sanction (neither of which I agree with FWIW) and listeners contributed dust, ravel, terrific, and seed.

4

Not to hijack my own post, but I like the paradox possibilities.

“shedding the dog” - Adding and removing hair at the same time!

5

I have heard these types of words refered to as Janus words or Contronyms and a quick google will yield many.

6

Dust has another set of contrary meanings. Cops dust for fingerprints by applying, then removing powder. Crooks, on the other hand, dust a stolen car or crime scene by wiping down everything they’ve touched to remove fingerprints. A bank robber near here turned over his stolen getaway car to a custom car washer. Handed the washer $80, and said, “I want it spotless.” He never came back for the car, and the police found no trace of him on the car.

7

Thanks! I love words with opposite meanings and all these years of dusting the house (removing) and dusting cakes (adding sugar) I never thought of this one!

8

Cleave is also a contronym - split/stick to.

9

Pitted prunes are generally without pits, but one could imagine the opposite meaning.

Cleave is a bit different. There are actually two verbs with apparently distinct histories that fell together very early (but only in the present: cleave, cleft, cloven means to separate, while cleave, cleaved, cleaved means to join) and have stayed together. You have to go back to Anglo-Saxen to find them different. FWIW, the German word to glue is kleben and glue is Klebstoff.