adjective
Etymology
Origin of bone-dry
First recorded in 1815–25
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.
Allegra Goodman’s family saga coaxes, in Sam Sacks’s words, “excellent, bone-dry humor” out of the skirmishes and long-running battles among members of a loving, fractious clan.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 27, 2026
De Angelis and Waltz are also a hoot together, she as a heaving, hissing vampire bride who can’t stop licking her chops, he as a bone-dry vampire hunter dedicated to his investigation.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 6, 2026
It’s dry but not bone-dry, a wine to please a wide range of palates.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 27, 2025
The combination of a bone-dry winter, an early and rapid spring snowmelt, and a forecasted anomalously hot summer raises the risk of intense fire activity across the region, he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 18, 2025
She had lived thus far in an isolated farmhouse surrounded by vast fields of wheat, with little to entertain her beyond the sound of the wind rustling the bone-dry stalks each autumn.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
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.
