dry-as-dust
Americanadjective
Etymology
Origin of dry-as-dust
1870–75; after Dr. Dryasdust, a fictitious pedant satirized in the prefaces of Sir Walter Scott's novels
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Yesterday, the decision emerged in a dry-as-dust news release at the dog end of the political day.
From BBC
Hughes has infused new life into dry-as-dust facts to produce a learned work that is brazenly, impudently vivacious.
From Washington Post
As Bernard Baruch points out in his introduction, “This is no dry-as-dust study. It deals with the raw stuff of living, how more than two billion men and women, including you and me, are to be fed, sheltered, and clothed — and whether or not we will live in peace tomorrow, and next year, and in the year 1975.”
From New York Times
Even that old windbag Polonius, played by Robert Joy, is less a bombastic grandstander than a dry-as-dust martinet.
From New York Times
Yet Irwin is hardly a dry-as-dust antiquary, and “Wonders Will Never Cease” frequently reveals the wide range of his reading: His description of the world’s end was obviously adapted from H.G.
From Washington Post
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
