Word.ws English Dictionary

dryly

/ˈdɹaɪ.li/

dryly adverb: in a dry manner.

Adverb

dryly (comparative more dryly, superlative most dryly)

  1. In a dry manner.
    • “Are you going?” said Mr. Chester, rising with a graceful indolence. “Let me light you down the stairs.”
      “Pray keep your seat,” returned the other dryly, “I know the way.” So, waving his hand slightly, and putting on his hat as he turned upon his heel, he went clanking out as he had come, shut the...1841 February–November, Charles Dickens, “Barnaby Rudge. Chapter 20.”, in Master Humphrey’s Clock, volume III, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, page 305
    • The company were convulsed with laughter, all except the host himself, who dryly remarked: ‘Very amusing, Mr. Robert, very amusing, truly; ye're a clever lad, very clever; but just let me tell you, […]’1900, Thomas Finlayson Henderson, “CULLEN, Robert”, in Dictionary of National Biography, volume 13, page 279

Examples of dryly in a sentence

  • “My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly. ¶ Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan. ¶ “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache.1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, “Zollenstein”, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC, page 41:
  • “That does not compute,” returns the robot dryly).1966 September 24, TV Guide, Radnor, Pa., page 25, column 1:
  • “She’s not going to talk back,” one top talent wrangler told me dryly.2025 October 4, Maureen Dowd, “When A.I. Came for Hollywood”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN...

All 13 example sentences with dryly

Forms of dryly

comparativemore dryly
superlativemost dryly
alternative formdrily

Origin of dryly

From dry + -ly.

Words that rhyme with dryly

Questions about dryly

What does dryly mean?
Dryly means in a dry manner.
How do you use dryly in a sentence?
“My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly. ¶ Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan. ¶ “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache.
What part of speech is dryly?
Dryly is an adverb.
How do you pronounce dryly?
Dryly is pronounced /ˈdɹaɪ.li/.

Words near dryly in the dictionary

  1. dryliners
  2. drylines
  3. drylining
  4. drylot
  5. drylots
  6. dryly
  7. Drymen
  8. drymonym
  9. drymonyms
  10. dryness
  11. drynesses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dryly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “dryly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dryly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.