Definition of "dry"

dry

/dɹaɪ/

adjective
comparative drier or dryer, superlative driest or dryest
1. Free from or lacking moisture.
  Quotations
  The weather, […] we […] both agreed, was too dry for the season.
  1716 March 16 (Gregorian calendar), Joseph Addison, “The Free-holder: No. 22. Monday, March 5. ”, in The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Esq; […], volume IV, London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], published 1721
  Not a dry eye was to be seen in the assembly.
  1855–1858, William H[ickling] Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Boston, Mass.: Phillips, Sampson, and Company
2. (petrochemistry) oil, or (agriculture) milk.
3. (masonry) Built without or lacking mortar.
  Quotations
  […] already the gate was blocked with a wall of squared stones laid dry, but very thick and very high, across the opening.
  1937 September 21, J[ohn] R[onald] R[euel] Tolkien, The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again, 3rd edition, London: Unwin Books, George Allen & Unwin, published 1966 (1970 printing), page 241
4. (chemistry) Anhydrous: free from or lacking water in any state, regardless of the presence of other liquids.
5. (figurative) Athirst, eager.
  Quotations
  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.
  1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene ii]
6. Free from or lacking alcohol or alcoholic beverages.
  Quotations
  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 […]
  c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene v]
7. (law) Describing an area where sales of alcoholic or strong alcoholic beverages are banned.
8. Free from or lacking embellishment or sweetness, particularly:
  Quotations
  These epistles will become less dry, more susceptible of ornament.
  1733, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Man. […], (please specify |epistle=I to IV), London: Printed for J[ohn] Wilford, […]
  1. (wine and other alcoholic beverages, ginger ale) Low in sugar; lacking sugar; unsweetened.
  2. (humor) Amusing without showing amusement.
  3. Lacking interest, boring.
    Quotations
    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 […]
    c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene v]
  4. (poker) Of a board or flop: Not permitting the creation of many or of strong hands.
  5. (fine arts) Exhibiting precise execution lacking delicate contours or soft transitions of color.
9. (aviation) Not using afterburners or water injection for increased thrust.
10. (sciences, somewhat derogatory) Involving computations rather than work with biological or chemical matter.
11. (of a sound recording) Free from applied audio effects (especially reverb).
12. Without a usual complement or consummation; impotent.
  Quotations
  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.
  1958, Gordon Grimley, The Book of the Bow, page 167
  […] most like "dry firing," or a dry release, wherein the string meets no resistance.
  1992, Pennsylvania Game News, volume 63, page 57
  When you shoot a bow, the arrow absorbs a high percentage of the energy released by the limbs. If you dry fire a bow (shoot it with no arrow on the string), the bow itself absorbs all the energy, […]
  1992, Dwight R. Schuh, Bowhunter's Encyclopedia, Stackpole Books, page 81
  Because some recipes require specific techniques such as high-intensity dry heating (heating while the pot is empty or heating with little or no fluid inside), read the manufacturer's instructions to ensure your vessel can handle such cooking […]
  2015, Naoko Takei Moore, Kyle Connaughton, Donabe: Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking, Ten Speed Press, page 8
  1. Of a bite from an animal: not containing the usual venom.
13. (Christianity) Of a mass, service, or rite: involving neither consecration nor communion.
noun
plural drys or dries
1. The process by which something is dried.
2. (US) A prohibitionist (of alcoholic beverages).
  Quotations
  The drys were as unhappy with the second part of the speech as the wets were with the first half.
  c. 1952-1996, Noah S. Sweat, quoted in 1996
3. An area with little or no rain, or sheltered from it.
4. (chiefly Australia, with "the") The dry season.
  Quotations
  […] 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— […]
  1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter VII, in Capricornia‎, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 91
  [T]he spring-fed river systems. Not the useless little tributary jutting off into a mud hole at the end of the Dry.
  2006, Alexis Wright, Carpentaria, Giramondo, published 2012, page 169
5. (Australia) An area of waterless country.
6. Unsweetened ginger ale; dry ginger.
  Quotations
  All day, all night you feel as if the Earth could fly/Three more all for fine Indian Gin and whiskey dry.
  1968, Bee Gees, “Indian Gin And Whiskey Dry”, in Idea(album)‎
  Can you buy dry ginger in Croatia? If not what is an alternative?
  2018 May 2, pyatts, Tripadvisor‎
  Black Douglas Blended Scotch and Dry Case 24 x 375mL Cans (Title).
  2021 July 26, cub_beer, eBay‎
7. (Britain, UK politics) A radical or hard-line Conservative; especially, one who supported the policies of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
verb
third-person singular simple present dries, present participle drying, simple past and past participle dried
1. (intransitive) To lose moisture.
2. (transitive) To remove moisture from.
3. (transitive, figurative) To exhaust; to cause to run dry.
4. (intransitive, informal) For an actor to forget his or her lines while performing.
  Quotations
  An actor never stumbled over his lines, he “fluffed”; he never forgot his dialogue, he “dried.”
  1986, Richard Collier, Make-believe: The Magic of International Theatre, page 146
  In one of the previews I dried (lost my lines) in my opening scene, 1.4, and had to improvise.
  2006, Michael Dobson, Performing Shakespeare's Tragedies Today, page 126

Definition of "dry"

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