dry-as-dust

Or dry·as·dust

[drahy-uhz-duhst]

adjective

1. dull and boring.

   a dry-as-dust biography.

Word History and Origins

Origin of dry as dust¹

1870–75; after Dr. Dryasdust, a fictitious pedant satirized in the prefaces of Sir Walter Scott's novels

Idioms and Phrases

Dull, boring, as in This text is dry as dust; it's putting me to sleep. [c. 1500]

Example Sentences

Yesterday, the decision emerged in a dry-as-dust news release at the dog end of the political day.

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Hughes has infused new life into dry-as-dust facts to produce a learned work that is brazenly, impudently vivacious.

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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.”

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Even that old windbag Polonius, played by Robert Joy, is less a bombastic grandstander than a dry-as-dust martinet.

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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.

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