Powdery means made of very fine dry particles. Powdery snow, a powdery texture, powdery mildew.
Powdery snow is what skiers want, because it is dry and light and it falls in very cold conditions. Powdery mildew is a fungus that coats leaves in white dust and is the commonest garden disease there is. The word describes touch and appearance at once.
1adjectivepowderyMade of very fine dry particles.
“The old plaster had turned powdery and crumbled at a touch.”
powdery is a quality of texture.
Latin
pulverem
Old French
poudre
Middle English
poudre
English
powder
English, today
powdery
From powder + -y. powder comes from Middle English poudre, pouder, pouldre, borrowed from Old French poudre, poldre, puldre, from Latin pulverem, accusative singular of Latin pulvis (“dust, powder”). a doublet of pulver. Compare pollen (“fine flour”), polverine, pulverize.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA