dry

adj

1. Free from or lacking moisture.

   “This towel's dry. Could you wet it and cover the chicken so it doesn't go dry as it cooks?”

   “The weather, […] we […] both agreed, was too dry for the season.”

   “Not a dry eye was to be seen in the assembly.”

   “The project poses exceptional challenges, given that Antarctica is the coldest, windiest and driest continent on Earth, as well as the most remote and inaccessible, being almost totally covered by a vast ice sheet.”

2. Unable to produce a liquid, as water, (petrochemistry) oil, or (agriculture) milk.

   “This well is as dry as that cow.”

3. Built without or lacking mortar.

   “[A]lready the gate was blocked with a wall of squared stones laid dry, but very thick and very high, across the opening.”

4. Anhydrous: free from or lacking water in any state, regardless of the presence of other liquids.

   “Dry alcohol is 200 proof.”

5. (figuratively)Athirst, eager.

   “Prospero:[…]Confederates / (ſo drie he was for Sway) with King of Naples / To giue him Annuall tribute, doe him homage / Subiect his Coronet, to his Crowne and bend / The Dukedom yet vnbow'd (alas poore Millaine) / To moſt ignoble ſtooping.”

6. Free from or lacking alcohol or alcoholic beverages.

   “Of course it's a dry house. He was an alcoholic but he's been dry for almost a year now.”

   “Ol. Go too, y'are a dry foole: Ile no more of you: besides you grow dis-honest. Clo. Two faults Madona, that drinke & good counsell wil amend: for giue the dry foole drink, then is the foole not dry[…]”

7. Describing an area where sales of alcoholic or strong alcoholic beverages are banned.

   “You'll have to drive out of this dry county to find any liquor.”

8. Free from or lacking embellishment or sweetness, particularly

   “These epistles will become less dry, more susceptible of ornament.”

9. Free from or lacking embellishment or sweetness

   “Proper martinis are made with London dry gin and dry vermouth.”

   “Fatima Blush: Oh, how reckless of me. I made you all wet. James Bond: Yes, but my martini is still dry. My name is James.”

10. Free from or lacking embellishment or sweetness

    “Steven Wright has a deadpan delivery, Norm Macdonald has a dry sense of humor, and Oscar Wilde had a dry wit.”

11. Free from or lacking embellishment or sweetness

    “a dry academic discipline turned into a living subject”

    “A dry lecture may require the professor to bring a water gun in order to keep the students' attention.”

    “Ol. Go too, y'are a dry foole: Ile no more of you: besides you grow dis-honest. Clo. Two faults Madona, that drinke & good counsell wil amend: for giue the dry foole drink, then is the foole not dry […]”

    “Mr. Evans naturally does not see things in a dry light. He has the dramatic instinct, and impresses it on all he touches.”

    “But there we were given only the dullest, driest, pemmicanised forms like The Student's Hume, Once I had a hundred pages of The Student's Hume as a holiday task.”

12. Free from or lacking embellishment or sweetness

    “Jake was hoping to make something good out of his suited 7-8 hand, but the flop came out dry: 2-5-10 rainbow, and all of the wrong suit!.”

13. Free from or lacking embellishment or sweetness
14. Not using afterburners or water injection for increased thrust.

    “This fighter jet's engine has a maximum dry thrust of 200 kilonewtons.”

15. (derogatory)Involving computations rather than work with biological or chemical matter.
16. Free from applied audio effects (especially reverb).
17. Without a usual complement or consummation; impotent.

    “never dry fire a bow”

    “dry humping her girlfriend”

    “making a dry run”

    “dry snitches are as bad as regular snitches”

    “A loose nocking point is equally dangerous since it may result in what is known as a 'dry release' when the arrow merely falls from a string a few feet away as the bow is shot. This may distort or weaken the bow.”

18. Without a usual complement or consummation; impotent.

    “dry bite”

19. In a dry spell (e.g., unemployed, slow).

    “Things are dry right now. We're hoping business'll pick up next month.”

    “Fa la la la Fa la la lee Now let me go, my honey oh back to Tennessee It's beefsteak when I'm workin, whiskey when I'm dry, and sweet heaven when I die”

20. Of a mass, service, or rite: involving neither consecration nor communion.
21. (Malaysia, Singapore)Mixed with sauce and not served in a soup.

    “I would have mee tai mak (short, thick noodles), either in soup or dry, with fishballs, pork balls or yong tau foo at this noodles shop near my house.”

22. Of code, having the quality of adhering to the principle of DRY; containing as little repetition as possible.

noun

1. The process by which something is dried.

   “This towel is still damp: I think it needs another dry.”

2. (US)A prohibitionist (of alcoholic beverages).

   “The drys were as unhappy with the second part of the speech as the wets were with the first half.”

3. An area with little or no rain, or sheltered from it.

   “Come under my umbrella and keep in the dry.”

4. (Australia, with-definite-article)The dry season.

   “[…] one was sodden to the bone and mildewed to the marrow and moved to pray […] for that which formerly he had cursed—the Dry! the good old Dry—when the grasses yellowed, browned, dried to tinder, burst into spontaneous flame— […]”

   “[T]he spring-fed river systems. Not the useless little tributary jutting off into a mud hole at the end of the Dry.”

5. (Australia)An area of waterless country.
6. Unsweetened ginger ale; dry ginger.

   “All day, all night you feel as if the Earth could fly/Three more all for fine Indian Gin and whiskey dry.”

   “Can you buy dry ginger in Croatia? If not what is an alternative?”

   “Black Douglas Blended Scotch and Dry Case 24 x 375mL Cans (Title).”

7. (British, UK)A radical or hard-line Conservative; especially, one who supported the policies of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

verb

1. (intransitive)To lose moisture.

   “The clothes dried on the line.”

   “The fruit dried in the dehydrator.”

2. (transitive)To remove moisture from.

   “Devin dried her eyes with a handkerchief.”

   “We dried the fruit in the dehydrator.”

3. (figuratively, transitive)To exhaust; to cause to run dry.
4. (informal, intransitive)For an actor to forget their lines while performing.

   “An actor never stumbled over his lines, he “fluffed”; he never forgot his dialogue, he “dried.””

   “In one of the previews I dried (lost my lines) in my opening scene, 1.4, and had to improvise.”

   “Blinded to the astonishment of a thousand spectators by the force of the footlights, [Derek] Jacobi realised he'd dried. Dried completely. It wasn't like he'd forgotten the words. It was like he'd never known them.”

5. To cause code to become DRY; to remove repetition from code.

phrase

1. (abbreviation, acronym, alt-of)Acronym of don't repeat yourself (“software development principle aimed at reducing repetition”).

   “The general principle here is DRY: Don't Repeat Yourself (HTOO). If you duplicate information in two or more places, sooner or later, you'll forget to update one of the copies […]”

name

1. A surname.