different between desolate vs dry

English

Etymology

From Middle English desolate, from Latin d?s?l?tus, past participle of d?s?l?re (“to leave alone, make lonely, lay waste, desolate”), from s?lus (“alone”).

Pronunciation

• (adjective) IPA^(key): /?d?s?l?t/
• (verb) IPA^(key): /?d?s?le?t/

Adjective

desolate (comparative more desolate, superlative most desolate)

1. Deserted and devoid of inhabitants.

   a desolate isle; a desolate wilderness; a desolate house
2. Barren and lifeless.
3. Made unfit for habitation or use because of neglect, destruction etc.

   desolate altars

4. Dismal or dreary.
5. Sad, forlorn and hopeless.

   He was left desolate by the early death of his wife.

   • voice of the poor and desolate

Translations

Verb

desolate (third-person singular simple present desolates, present participle desolating, simple past and past participle desolated)

1. To deprive of inhabitants.
   • 1625, Francis Bacon, “Of Vicissitude of Things” in Essays, London: H. Herringman et al., 1691, p. 204,^[1]

     If you consider well of the People of the West-Indies, it is very probable, that they are a newer or younger People, than the People of the old World. And it is much more likely, that the destruction that hath heretofore been there, was not by Earthquakes, […] but rather, it was Desolated by a particular Deluge: For Earthquakes are seldom in those Parts.

   • 1717, John Dryden (translator), Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Dublin: G. Risk et al., 1727, Volume I, Book I, p. 16,^[2]

     O Righteous Themis, if the Pow’rs above

     By Pray’rs are bent to pity, and to love;

     If humane Miseries can move their Mind;

     If yet they can forgive, and yet be kind;

     Tell how we may restore, by second birth,

     Mankind, and people desolated Earth.

   • 1891, Charles Creighton, A History of Epidemics in Britain, Cambridge University Press, Chapter 1, p. 23,^[3]

     York was so desolated just before the survey that it is not easy to estimate its ordinary population […]

2. To devastate or lay waste somewhere.
   • 1801, Robert Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, 2nd edition, 1809, Volume I, Book 3, p. 118,^[4]

     Then Moath pointed where a cloud

     Of Locusts, from the desolated fields

     Of Syria, wing’d their way.

   • 1905, H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, Chapter 2, § 3,^[5]

     But in Utopia there will be wide stretches of cheerless or unhealthy or toilsome or dangerous land with never a household; there will be regions of mining and smelting, black with the smoke of furnaces and gashed and desolated by mines, with a sort of weird inhospitable grandeur of industrial desolation, and the men will come thither and work for a spell and return to civilisation again, washing and changing their attire in the swift gliding train.

3. To abandon or forsake something.
4. To make someone sad, forlorn and hopeless.
   • 1914, Arnold Bennett, The Author’s Craft, London: Hodder & Stoughton, Part II, p. 44,^[6]

     It is not altogether uncommon to hear a reader whose heart has been desolated by the poignancy of a narrative complain that the writer is unemotional.

   • 1948, Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country, New York: Scribner, Chapter 36, p. 271,^[7]

     Kumalo stood shocked at the frightening and desolating words.

Related terms

• desolation

Translations

Further reading

• desolate in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• desolate in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• desolate at OneLook Dictionary Search

German

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -a?t?

Adjective

desolate

1. inflection of desolat:
   1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
   2. strong nominative/accusative plural
   3. weak nominative all-gender singular
   4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular

Italian

Adjective

desolate f pl

1. feminine plural of desolato

Latin

Participle

d?s?l?te

1. vocative masculine singular of d?s?l?tus

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: dr?, IPA^(key): /d?a?/, /d??a?/
• Rhymes: -a?

Etymology

Adjective and noun from Middle English drye, dryge, drü?e, from Old English dr??e (“dry; parched, withered”), from Proto-Germanic *dr?giz, *draugiz (“dry, hard”), from Proto-Indo-European *d?er??- (“to strengthen; become hard”), from *d?er- (“to hold, support”).

Cognate with Scots dry, drey (“dry”), North Frisian drüg, driig, Saterland Frisian druuch (“dry”), West Frisian droech (“dry”), Dutch droog (“dry”), Low German dröög (“dry”), German dröge (“dull”), Icelandic draugur (“a dry log”). Related also to German trocken (“dry”), West Frisian drege (“long-lasting”), Danish drøj (“tough”), Swedish dryg (“lasting, hard”), Icelandic drjúgur (“ample, long”), Latin firmus (“strong, firm, stable, durable”). See also drought, drain, dree.

Verb from Middle English drien, from Old English dr??an (“to dry”), from Proto-West Germanic *dr?gijan, from Proto-Germanic *dr?giz (“hard, desiccated, dry”), from Proto-Indo-European *d?er??- (“strong, hard, solid”).

Alternative forms

• drie (obsolete)

Adjective

dry (comparative drier or dryer, superlative driest or dryest)

1. Free from or lacking moisture.
   • 1856-1858, William H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip II

     Not a dry eye was to be seen in the assembly.

2. Unable to produce a liquid, as water, (petrochemistry) oil, or (farming) milk.

3. (masonry) Built without or lacking mortar.
   • 1937, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, p. 241:

     […] already the gate was blocked with a wall of squared stones laid dry, but very thick and very high, across the opening.

4. (chemistry) Anhydrous: free from or lacking water in any state, regardless of the presence of other liquids.

5. (figuratively) Athirst, eager.
6. Free from or lacking alcohol or alcoholic beverages.
   • c. 1601, William Shakespeare, Twelfe Night, or What You Will, Act I, Scene v:

     Ol. Go too, y'are a dry foole: Ile no more of you: besides you grow dis-honest.
     Clo. Two faults Madona, that drinke & good counsell wil amend: for giue the dry foole drink, then is the foole not dry...

7. (law) Describing an area where sales of alcoholic or strong alcoholic beverages are banned.

8. Free from or lacking embellishment or sweetness, particularly:
   1. (wine and other alcoholic beverages) Low in sugar; lacking sugar; unsweetened.

   2. (humor) Amusing without showing amusement.

   3. Lacking interest, boring.
      • c. 1601, William Shakespeare, Twelfe Night, or What You Will, Act I, Scene v:

        Ol. Go too, y'are a dry foole: Ile no more of you: besides you grow dis-honest.
        Clo. Two faults Madona, that drinke & good counsell wil amend: for giue the dry foole drink, then is the foole not dry […]

   4. (fine arts) Exhibiting precise execution lacking delicate contours or soft transitions of color.
9. (aviation) Not using afterburners or water injection for increased thrust.

10. (sciences, somewhat derogatory) Involving computations rather than work with biological or chemical matter.
11. (of a sound recording) Free from applied audio effects.
12. Without a usual complement or consummation; impotent.
    • 1992, Dwight R. Schuh, Bowhunter's Encyclopedia, Stackpole Books (?ISBN), page 81:

      When you shoot a bow, the arrow absorbs a high percentage of the energy released by the limbs. If you dry fire a bow (shoot it with no arrow on the string), the bow itself absorbs all the energy, […]

    • 2015, Naoko Takei Moore, Kyle Connaughton, Donabe: Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking, Ten Speed Press (?ISBN), page 8:

      Because some recipes require specific techniques such as high-intensity dry heating (heating while the pot is empty or heating with little or no fluid inside), read the manufacturer's instructions to ensure your vessel can handle such cooking […]

    1. Of a bite from an animal: not containing the usual venom.
13. (Christianity) Of a mass, service, or rite: involving neither consecration nor communion.

Synonyms

• (free from liquid or moisture): See Thesaurus:dry

Antonyms

• (free from liquid or moisture): See Thesaurus:wet
• (abstinent from alcohol): wet
• (not using afterburners or water injection): wet
• (of a scientist or lab: doing computation): wet

Derived terms

Descendants

• Sranan Tongo: drei

Translations

Noun

dry (plural drys or dries)

1. The process by which something is dried.

   This towel is still damp: I think it needs another dry.

2. (US) A prohibitionist (of alcoholic beverages).
   • c. 1952-1996, Noah S. Sweat, quoted in 1996

     The drys were as unhappy with the second part of the speech as the wets were with the first half.

3. (chiefly Australia, with "the") The dry season.
   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1943, Chapter VII, page 91, [1]

     […] one was sodden to the bone and mildewed to the marrow and moved to pray […] for that which formerly he had cursed—the Dry! the good old Dry—when the grasses yellowed, browned, dried to tinder, burst into spontaneous flame— […]

   • 2006, Alexis Wright, Carpentaria, Giramondo 2012, p. 169:

     [T]he spring-fed river systems. Not the useless little tributary jutting off into a mud hole at the end of the Dry.

4. (Australia) An area of waterless country.
5. (Britain, UK politics) A radical or hard-line Conservative; especially, one who supported the policies of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

   Antonym: wet

Verb

dry (third-person singular simple present dries, present participle drying, simple past and past participle dried)

1. (intransitive) To lose moisture.

   The clothes dried on the line.

2. (transitive) To remove moisture from.

   Devin dried her eyes with a handkerchief.

3. (obsolete, intransitive) To be thirsty.
   • c. 1390, William Langland, Piers Plowman, I:

     And drynke whan þow dryest · ac do nou?t out of resoun.

4. (transitive, figuratively) To exhaust; to cause to run dry.
5. (intransitive, informal) For an actor to forget his or her lines while performing.
   • 1986, Richard Collier, Make-believe: The Magic of International Theatre (page 146)

     An actor never stumbled over his lines, he “fluffed”; he never forgot his dialogue, he “dried.”

   • 2006, Michael Dobson, Performing Shakespeare's Tragedies Today (page 126)

     In one of the previews I dried (lost my lines) in my opening scene, 1.4, and had to improvise.

Conjugation

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• desiccant
• desiccate
• desiccation

Anagrams

• YRD

Albanian

Alternative forms

• dryn

Etymology

From Proto-Albanian *dr?na, from the same root as dru. Cognate to Sanskrit ?????? (dru??, “bow”), Persian ?????? (“rainbow”).

Noun

dry m (indefinite plural dryna, definite singular dryni, definite plural drynat)

1. lock, bolt

Declension

Related terms

• dru
• drushtë
• ndryj

References

Middle English

Adjective

dry

1. Alternative form of drye

Old English

Etymology

Borrowed from a Brythonic language, from Proto-Brythonic *drüw, from Proto-Celtic *druwits (“druid”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dry?/

Noun

dr? m

1. a sorcerer or magician

Derived terms

• dr?cræft
• dr?ecge

Descendants

• Middle English: dri, dri?, dry
  • ? Middle English: dri?mann, dri?menn pl

Welsh

Pronunciation

• (North Wales) IPA^(key): /dr??/
• (South Wales) IPA^(key): /dri?/

Verb

dry

1. Soft mutation of try.

Mutation