dry up
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English
[edit]Verb
[edit]dry up (third-person singular simple present dries up, present participle drying up, simple past and past participle dried up)
- (intransitive) To become dry (often of weather); to lose water.
- I'll go shopping when it dries up.
- Last summer the lake completely dried up.
- (transitive) To cause to become dry.
- The heatwave dried up all the rivers.
- (intransitive, transitive, intransitive) To manually dry dishes and utensils.
- (transitive) To deprive someone of (something vital).
- The bankruptcy rumor dried up his sales.
- (intransitive) To gradually decrease, and eventually cease; to wither away.
- 2008, Adele, First Love:
- This love has dried up and stayed behind
- When our money dried up, we had to get proper jobs.
- (intransitive) To stop talking; to forget what one was going to say.
- This surprised me so much that I dried up for a moment.
- (1930s US slang) To shut up or to drop a topic.
- Oh, dry up, you old fuddy-duddy!
Usage notes
[edit]- dry out refers to losing excess water, while dry up is used for losing constituent water (desiccate)
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]to become dry
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to cause to become dry
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