keep one's powder dry

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Stay alert, be careful, as in Go ahead and take on the opposition, but keep your powder dry. This colloquial expression, which originally alluded to keeping gunpowder dry so that it would ignite, has been used figuratively since the 1800s but today is less common than take care.

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Mississippi’s nickname comes from the magnificent trees that grow there. What is it?

The Sunflower State

The Evergreen State

The Magnolia State

The Mockingbird State

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Words nearby keep one's powder dry

keep one's head, keep one's mouth shut, keep one's nose clean, keep one's nose to the grindstone, keep one's own counsel, keep one's powder dry, keep one's shirt on, keep one's temper, keep one's wits about one, keep one's word, keep out

Example sentences from the Web for keep one's powder dry

Added to drinking water at concentrations of around one part per million, fluoride ions stick to dental plaque.
Anti-Fluoriders Are The OG Anti-Vaxxers|Michael Schulson|July 27, 2016|DAILY BEAST
In his view, a writer has only one duty: to be present in his books.
Houellebecq’s Incendiary Novel Imagines France With a Muslim President|Pierre Assouline|January 9, 2015|DAILY BEAST
Yet this, in the end, is a book from which one emerges sad, gloomy, disenchanted, at least if we agree to take it seriously.
Houellebecq’s Incendiary Novel Imagines France With a Muslim President|Pierre Assouline|January 9, 2015|DAILY BEAST
The fear of violence should not determine what one does or does not say.
Trolls and Martyrdom: Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie|Arthur Chu|January 9, 2015|DAILY BEAST

The al Qaeda-linked gunmen shot back, but only managed to injure one officer before they were taken out.
France Kills Charlie Hebdo Murderers|Nico Hines|January 9, 2015|DAILY BEAST
Practise gliding in the form of inflection, or slide, from one extreme of pitch to another.
Expressive Voice Culture|Jessie Eldridge Southwick
He alludes to it as one of their evil customs and used by them to produce insensibility.
Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce|E. R. Billings.
There was a rumor that Alessandro and his father had both died; but no one knew anything certainly.
Ramona|Helen Hunt Jackson
Truth is a torch, but one of enormous size; so that we slink past it in rather a blinking fashion for fear it should burn us.
Pearls of Thought|Maturin M. Ballou
Under the one-sixth they appear as slender, highly refractive fibers with double contour and, often, curled or split ends.
A Manual of Clinical Diagnosis|James Campbell Todd

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