dry up
verb8 senses
- 1To become dry (often of weather); to lose water.
- 2To cause to become dry.
- 3To manually dry dishes and utensils.
- 4To deprive someone of (something vital).
- 5To gradually decrease and eventually cease.
- 6To stop talking because one has forgotten what one was…
- 7To forget one's lines.
- 8To stop talking or drop a topic.
1
To become dry (often of weather); to lose water.
- I'll go shopping when it dries up.
- Last summer the lake completely dried up.
1 more example
- But those newcomers need water — water that is vanishing as a megadrought dries up reservoirs and rivers across the West. […] Groundwater and streams vital both to farmers and cities are drying up. […] Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah said all but one of the fields on his family’s farm had dried up.2021 July 20, Jack Healy, Sophie Kasakove, “A Drought So Dire That a Utah Town Pulled the Plug on Growth”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 31 Jul 2021:
2
To cause to become dry.
- The heatwave dried up all the rivers.
3
Ambitransitive To manually dry dishes and utensils.
- I'll dry up if you wash up.
4
To deprive someone of (something vital).
- The bankruptcy rumor dried up his sales.
5
To gradually decrease and eventually cease.
- When our money dried up, we had to get proper jobs.
- After the stock market crash, the easy financing dried up.
1 more example
- This love has dried up and stayed behind2008, Adele, First Love:
6
To stop talking because one has forgotten what one was going to say.
- This surprised me so much that I dried up for a moment.
- “Well, Atticus, I was just sayin‘ to Mr. Cunningham that entailments are bad an’ all that, but you said not to worry, it takes a long time sometimes… that you all’d ride it out together…” I was slowly drying up, wondering what idiocy I had committed.1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC:
7
Of an actor To forget one's lines.
8
To stop talking or drop a topic.
- Oh, dry up, you old fuddy-duddy!
- "Oh, dry up,' said Arnold morosely.1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 168:
- Derived terms
- dry up and blow away