high and dry

Idioms  

1. Stranded, as in They walked out on the party, leaving me high and dry. This expression originally alluded to a ship that had run aground or was in dry dock. Its figurative use dates from the late 1800s.

---

Example Sentences

Only that department is set to get left high and dry once Saturday starts, but that’s still significant given its arms include the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S.

From MarketWatch • Feb. 13, 2026

But just now, the late spring weather forecast for temperatures and precipitation thereabouts looks hearteningly like the dramatic peninsula itself: high and dry.

From Los Angeles Times • May 3, 2024

The land is high and dry, the ground rocky and inhospitable — not like the rainy coastal Northwest, where trees grow thick and fast.

From New York Times • Apr. 4, 2024

When a cyberattack knocked the British Library out of commission in October of last year, a nation’s researchers, scholars, students, and bookworms were left high and dry.

From Slate • Jan. 19, 2024

I tell him everything worked just like he said it would, and the Mary Rose is high and dry, but now I’m stumped.

From "The Young Man and the Sea" by Rodman Philbrick