Sawdust is the fine powder left behind by cutting wood. A pile of sawdust, sawdust everywhere, sweep up the sawdust.
It is used to soak up spills, as animal bedding, in chipboard, and as fuel in pellet form, so almost none of it is wasted in a working mill. Breathing fine hardwood dust is a genuine health hazard, which is why extraction is a legal requirement in workshops. Note that circus and butcher floors were once spread with sawdust, which is where the sawdust ring and sawdust floor come from.
1nounsawdustThe fine powder left behind by cutting wood.
“The floor of the carpenter's workshop was covered in sawdust.”
sawdust is wood waste.
The word is a plain compound of saw and dust, both native English. It is one of the group of workshop words English never bothered to borrow a Latin term for.
From saw + dust.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA