dry

Meanings

Adjective

• Free from or lacking moisture.
• Unable to produce a liquid, as water, oil, or milk.
• Built without or lacking mortar.
• Anhydrous: free from or lacking water in any state, regardless of the presence of other liquids.
• Athirst, eager.
• Free from or lacking alcohol or alcoholic beverages.
• Describing an area where sales of alcoholic or strong alcoholic beverages are banned.
• Free from or lacking embellishment or sweetness, particularly:
• Not using afterburners or water injection for increased thrust.
• Involving computations rather than work with biological or chemical matter.
• Free from applied audio effects (especially reverb).
• Without a usual complement or consummation; impotent.
• Of a mass, service, or rite: involving neither consecration nor communion.

Noun

• The process by which something is dried.
• A prohibitionist (of alcoholic beverages).
• An area with little or no rain, or sheltered from it.
• The dry season.
• An area of waterless country.
• Unsweetened ginger ale; dry ginger
• A radical or hard-line Conservative; especially, one who supported the policies of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

Verb

• To lose moisture.
• To remove moisture from.
• To be thirsty.
• To exhaust; to cause to run dry.
• For an actor to forget his or her lines while performing.

Related

Opposite words

• wet

Origin

• Adjective and noun from Middle English drye, dryge, druȝe, from Old English drȳġe, from Proto-Germanic *drūgiz, *draugiz, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰerǵʰ-, from *dʰer-.
• Cognate with Scots dry, drey, North Frisian drüg, driig, Saterland Frisian druuch, West Frisian droech, Dutch droog, Low German dröög, German dröge, Icelandic draugur. Related also to German trocken, West Frisian drege, Danish drøj, Swedish dryg, Icelandic drjúgur, Latin firmus. See also drought, drain, dree.
• Verb from Middle English drien, from Old English drȳġan, from Proto-West Germanic *drūgijan, from Proto-Germanic *drūgiz, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰerǵʰ-.