Definition of "rusty"

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know, / With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, / And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;

1855, Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, section XIV

Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with […] on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs.

1914, Louis Joseph Vance, chapter I, in Nobody, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published 1915

Before the match, Hodgson had expressed the hope that his players would be fresh rather than rusty after an 18-day break from league commitments because of two successive postponements.

2010 December 29, Sam Sheringham, “Liverpool 0-1 Wolverhampton”, in BBC

He wore a black jacket, rusty and amorphous.

1911, Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson

The clerk stared at him and the rusty black bonnet a moment, and then laughed.

1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons

My angles dusty, two black hands on the rustyAnd I got uck from a peng ting, mad back but the chest busty

2014 August 25, Dimzy of 67 (lyrics and music), “Outside”‎, 1:29–1:35