Sawdust is the fine powder and tiny fragments of wood that fall away when you cut, sand, or shape lumber. If you've ever watched someone use a saw to cut a board, you've probably seen sawdust drift through the air like brown snow and pile up on the floor below.

The word describes exactly what it is: dust made by sawing. Fresh sawdust smells wonderful, like the clean scent of the forest, and carpenters and woodworkers end up covered in it by the end of the day. It gathers in their hair, sticks to their clothes, and fills the air in workshops.

Sawdust has many practical uses beyond woodworking. People pack it around ice to keep it from melting, spread it on floors to absorb spills, use it as bedding for animals like horses and hamsters, or even compress it into logs for burning in fireplaces. Some restaurants smoke meat over sawdust from specific trees to add flavor. In the past, butchers scattered sawdust on their shop floors to soak up moisture and make cleaning easier.

When something is described as a sawdust joint or a sawdust trail, it usually means a simple, rough place without fancy decoration, like the basic wooden buildings where sawdust might actually cover the floor.