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 cease to exist; to disappear
- 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.
- 1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1965, →OCLC, page 168:
- "Oh, dry up,' said Arnold morosely.
- (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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